


Thrall of Enchainment

by NadaNine



Category: Bleach
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Master/Slave, Mind Games, Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:26:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3820390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NadaNine/pseuds/NadaNine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unsolicited Sequel to "Chained to an Escapist".</p>
<p>After the Winter War, Gin chooses slavery to the Kuchiki House to escape execution, figuring that he has nothing left to lose. He might just be wrong about that, but there might also be something left to gain as he tries to figure out what compelled Byakuya to take ownership of him in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **BIG IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:** The original concept of this story does not belong to me, and this sequel has been created without the explicit permission of the original owner with absolutely no disrespect intended.
> 
> Let me explain: Some time ago I came across a story on fanfiction.net called [Chained to an Escapist](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4386789/1/Chained-to-an-Escapist) and was immediately smitten with it. I adore Master/Slave relationships, and was totally pinged by the pairing and the very charged tension between them. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the author has discontinued the story (right when it was starting to get really good) and it hasn't been updated since 2008.
> 
> The story set fire to my imagination, and since it seemed unlikely to ever reach a conclusion I decided, just for fun, to write the next scene for my own enjoyment. And then the next scene. And the next. And now my silly, unofficial continuation of that story is over 50,000 words and is pretty much the longest thing I have ever written for this fandom. I didn't start writing with the intention of sharing it, but now that it's reached such length and has pretty much become a story in and of itself, I thought maybe I would post it for others to share my enjoyment of the original story, as a homage to the author rather than an act of plagiarism. I give full credit to [Lances](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/503368/Lances) for giving me the foundation and the inspiration to write this.
> 
> Since I pretty much picked up from the next scene, you do need to go read the original story to understand the backdrop for this. Obviously I like it a lot myself, so [go read that first](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4386789/1/Chained-to-an-Escapist). Then come back here to pick up where it left off.

“Unacceptable.” 

That haughty pronouncement brought Gin jolting awake with a twitch that quickly turned into shivers. The tiled floor was fiercely cold, and it had crept into his bones while he'd slept. He hadn't managed to drag himself back to the bedroom; such a sensible idea had been completely beyond him. Now he was freezing, aching, trembling in a way he was sure was going to shatter his brittle body, and more disconcertingly he had the very unpleasant feeling that he had forgotten something important that was going to get him into some very nasty trouble.

Then he heard footsteps behind him, and understood in fairly short order where that trouble was likely to come from.

“Rule number seven,” Byakuya began imposingly, with a note of condemnation in his voice that made Gin's stomach twist. “You will begin your days by reporting to me no more than one hour after dawn so that I may assign you your daily tasks.”

Gin vaguely remembered reading something to that effect, but the words blurred in his mind and made no sense. His mouth tasted like the sour remnants of bile and he only wanted to curl into a tighter ball and fall into very comfortable oblivion.

Byakuya was hardly finished, however. “I took pity on you because of your injuries, and so I did not expect you to be able to make such an early appearance today, but now it's well past sunrise and I will not tolerate any form of laziness from you, slave.”

Byakuya stepped closer, and Gin tried to brace himself. It didn't protect him in the slightest from the kick his new master aimed at him. “Get up.”

There hadn't been much force behind the blow, not nearly what Byakuya could have managed if he'd wanted to, but the ball of the noble's foot struck Gin in the small of his back, right where the scalding tattoo was still making its malicious presence known. Gin couldn't hold back a pitiful yelp. He shouldn't expect any gentleness – he didn't deserve it – and the sickening fear of being touched, violated, brutalised in yet more sensitive places was enough to spur him into an attempt at sitting up even though he was shaking so badly he could hardly control his limbs. That he managed it was something of a miracle in itself, and he wrapped his bony arms around his stomach, a pitiful effort to hold himself steady. Only once he'd lifted himself off the floor did he realise it had been soothing the burning heat on his forehead and the scratches on his face. He could still feel the crust of salt on his cheeks even though any moisture had long since evaporated away. 

Apparently shame was a feeling that could sting even in the face of utter exhaustion.

For once, he had absolutely no desire to flout the rule about looking Byakuya in the eye, at his face, or in any direction even remotely in his vicinity. He hadn't known what the other man's expressions had been throughout yesterday's horrific ordeal and the equally humiliating aftermath, and he didn't particularly _want_ to know. It was enough to imagine the disgust, almost as poignant as what Gin felt for himself right now.

Byakuya's definition of 'up', however, apparently asked for more than Gin's limited strength was willing to give him, and the noble wasn't feeling even remotely compassionate about the situation. The sharpness in his movements was as palatable as Senbonzakura's edge, which Gin was expecting to become reacquainted with any minute now. “I said _get up_.”

He'd most likely intended to grab Gin by the scruff of the neck and haul him bodily upwards onto his feet or his knees or whatever he'd meant by his demand, but the moment his fingers touched Gin's nape –

_\--handshandshandstouchingno!_

Gin wasn't sure which of them was more surprised when he yanked away from the touch at a speed that almost did shunpo justice, so blindingly fast Gin barely knew what he was doing but that didn't matter anyway because he couldn't _think_. He probably did himself more harm than Byakuya would have, as in rolling away he entirely forgot about his maimed hand and put pressure on the place where his fingers _weren't_. His spine sang with an agony that bloomed up from the sealing tattoo when his back hit the far wall, but the terror mattered more than the pain. Whatever meagre protection Byakuya had offered him the day before, covering his atrocious nakedness, pulling him away from the scathing gazes of the Kuchiki clan, meant nothing at all. Probably he'd done it just to spare himself any further embarrassment in having his family point out what a pitiful excuse for a slave Gin was.

Gin's head was turned as far away from Byakuya as possible, leaving him staring towards the open door. It was indeed bright out in the bedroom. Clearly he'd overslept, not that he'd had any means to wake himself from convalescent slumber. Undoubtedly he was going to be punished for that, as well as for disobeying an order, and for shying away so violently from Byakuya's hands. His chest was a vice around his lungs, constricting them until he could barely breath, and the sound of Gin trying to gasp air was the only noise as Byakuya seemed to take a moment to decide how he would answer this grievous insult. Gin closed his eyes and waited for the blow.

But after a hollow minute of dread, Byakuya said only, “Return to your bed. Clearly, you're going to be useless to me for the rest of the day.”

He walked out, Gin twitching minutely at each footfall on the expectation that maybe he'd change his mind, but Byakuya's stride receded right out of the room and beyond the scope of Gin's hearing, the door slamming closed with mutual irritation in his wake. 

It took Gin several minutes to calm down enough to realise that those words probably qualified as some sort of order that he'd better follow if he didn't want to lose any more of his limbs. Also, the bathroom floor was thoroughly uncomfortable, his wasted flesh providing no protection from its hardness.

He was profoundly glad Byakuya had left. It took him a humiliatingly long time to crawl back towards his futon, his knees feeling more bruised with every foot of space crossed and his left hand aching fiercely. Underneath the perfunctory wrapping of bandages he'd been treated with, it was probably bleeding again. He could smell the blood, and the general taint of his own sickness crawling under his skin like the infection. He'd had worse, he kept reminding himself, but it was a very pitiful comfort at the moment.

Slipping back beneath his blankets, however, he could almost bless Byakuya for the order...at least in the private recesses of his own thoughts were no one could possibly hear it. The softness under his back was an unspeakable relief, and the blankets gave the comforting promise that he might actually be warm again some time in the near future. He was asleep again in mere seconds, burying his forehead into the cool cushion of the pillow.

* * *

He didn't think he was going to enjoy waking up any time in the near future. Unconsciousness was so much better. No painful memories trying to surface, no pounding headache making the room spin or blinding light trying to force its way through his eyeballs and into his skull like unfriendly spears. He wondered if he could pretend sleep well enough to fool his body into returning to its blissful embrace, but the sheer amount of discomfort he was in was driving nails of unpleasantness into his conciousness, keeping him awake.

The collar around his neck was chafing. His maimed hand throbbed in time with the ringing in his head. His back was ablaze with needlepoints of pain, like he was living through the tattooing process all over again. His stomach felt like it had been turned inside out and put back upside down. His throat was burned raw with the acid from the bile he'd heaved the night before, and just the reminder of it was enough to make his abdomen clench with the promise of more dry retches.

And he was so thirsty.

He rolled over, squinting against the brightness that was obscenely cheerful in face of how horrible he felt, and noticed that at some point someone had placed a tray beside him. He could spy a cup and a covered bowl, and inhaling deeply he could catch the muted scent of something warm and savoury.

His stomach did a slow, lurching roll. Gin turned back over. It wasn't worth trying to find out what might be there. Even if he could sit up, his hands were too weak and shaky to hold anything, and the porcelain dishes looked both pretty and priceless. If he broke them, it was just one more piece of evidence to testify to his own inadequacy.

He forced down the nausea and tried to distance himself from his thoughts and his body, but naturally at the point it would have been most helpful, he couldn't manage it at all. His hair was plastered to his skin, his pillow no longer cool and dry but drenched in sweat. When he released a hand from the blankets to touch his face, he found that his forehead was feverishly hot but his fingers were cold as ice. The infection was obviously running its course. Fantastic. Hanatarou had assured him (or rather, Byakuya) that it wasn't likely to kill him now that he'd been medicated for it, but it clearly wasn't going to be a very pleasant experience.

Not for the first time, he wondered if maybe death on Sokyoku Hill wouldn't have been the kinder fate. It galled him that maybe little Rukia-chan had been right.

He had his back to the door, miserably contemplating his various ills whilst staring at the far wall, when someone entered. It annoyed him somewhat to realise he could now recognise Byakuya's tread by the distinctive clip of his walk. Gin wondered if ignoring the noble would convince him to leave in short order, but his plan was swiftly thwarted.

“Wake up, Gin,” Byakua said, cool and commanding, giving Gin's shoulder a short, firm shake. At least it wasn't his back, this time, but even so Gin flinched at the contact – too obviously to pretend he was really unconscious still. 

He was reluctant to turn, but Byakuya's fingers dug into his flesh a little more firmly, forcing him to roll onto his back. Gin made the hasty effort to avert his eyes, picking a harmless piece of the wall to watch instead.

“You've been sleeping all day,” Byakuya told him, disapproving, as if he'd somehow expected Gin to do something different in spite of the earlier order. “Eat something. You need to regain your strength.”

So he'd be healthy enough not to drop dead, Gin presumed, and therefore get Byakuya in trouble for not upholding his end of the contract. Well, the concern was both unnecessary and unwelcome. Gin shook his head, not trusting his voice to answer. He didn't want to eat; he just wanted to sleep, preferably under the influence of something that would kill the pain for another couple of hours.

Refusal wasn't an option, of course. Even without looking at him, Gin could feel Byakuya's gaze narrow dangerously. “That wasn't a request.”

Of course it wasn't. Gin almost scoffed, but he hadn't the strength. Instead he just shook his head with a bit more emphasis. He wasn't refusing just out of spite, although that wasn't an unlikely suspicion so he couldn't fault Byakuya for having it. Eating was a sheer impossibility. He wasn't going to be keeping anything down, no matter how bitterly his insides complained about their emptiness, and the prospect of vomiting all over himself was another humiliation he didn't need. He closed his eyes, going limp, and hoped Byakuya would just decide it wasn't worth the effort.

He almost thought he'd won when Byakuya let out a small sound of disgust and began to move, but instead of rising to leave Gin felt hands lifting him from beneath his shoulders, disturbingly close to his throat.

For a moment, he was utterly convinced Byakuya was about to wring his neck from sheer irritation, and his eyes flew open, wide and sightless, a hitched gasp issuing from his lips that would never have time to become a scream. He should have struggled, but none of the frantic signals from his brain seemed to be getting anywhere past his collarbones, and so Byakuya had very little trouble in levering Gin's head across to rest on one of his knees. Just as Gin was trying to figure out why Byakuya would do that – to strangle him more intimately, perhaps? – the noble had picked up the small cup from the tray and was bringing it up to Gin's lips.

“Do not come to expect this,” Byakuya warned him, absurdly, as if Gin had any idea of what to expect from him at all when everything so far had been so confusingly nonsensical. “It's only that none of the House servants would agree to tend you, and in the end you are my own responsibility. If you die, it will be no fault of mine.”

Byakuya's hand was stern and impossible to disobey, wrapping under Gin's chin, not letting him turn away from the cup being pressed against his lips. There was no kindness in it; Gin almost choked as liquid hit his tongue before his mouth remembered what to do and he managed to swallow.

It was only water, and for the next few minutes there was nothing more important than finally tending to his parched thirst He drank greedily, no longer needing any encouragement although Byakuya didn't choose to release him. He almost whined when the cup was emptied, but showing far more patience than Gin would have expected from him, Byakuya refilled it and repeated the process, letting him drink.

Gin was absurdly grateful, and all the more chagrined because of it. This was perhaps not the lowest point Byakuya had seen him at so far, but it was pretty close to it. A Captain of the Gotei 13, reduced to whimpering pitifully for water, unable to move, paralysed by a need that barely held fear at bay. No doubt Byakuya could feel Gin's pulse racing from where his elegant fingers were resting on Gin's throat and _knew_ how pathetic he really was. 

Honestly, Aizen would be ashamed of him. Gin had always been much better at hiding his emotions than this, but having been stripped down in front of strangers who'd peeled away his layers one by one, dissecting them, mocking them, he had nothing to hide behind. Not even hate, which should have been stronger than ever, but instead had coiled up into a more pitiful thankfulness.

Thankful. To Kuchiki Byakuya. Who had cut off his fingers and dragged him up to be verbally shredded by his relatives. The whole situation was so horrible, it might almost have been funny to someone else.

Once the worst of his thirst was quenched, Gin found he could barely keep his eyes open. It was only one discomfort eased among many, but it was enough to convince his body that perhaps it could get on with curing itself instead of torturing Gin's senses. He'd have quite happily drifted off right there on Byakuya's lap except that apparently the water wasn't all he intended to force on Gin. This time he lifted the bowl to Gin's mouth, and tentatively Gin attempted a small taste.

It was some kind of rice porridge, soft and inoffensive, but just the prospect of it in his stomach made his throat close up. He choked on it, coughing, nearly making Byakuya spill the contents of the dish as he tried to turn his head away, but the noble was having none of it. With a low growl he pinned Gin by the throat, all but shoving the rim of the bowl through his lips and forcing it into his mouth. Between the choice of swallowing and spluttering, Gin valiantly reigned the latter impulse even as his insides tried to reject the invading food. It was like trying to swallow sand, scouring the acid-burned walls of his oesophagus, but Gin knew he couldn't fight it. He was defeated, purely, simply, in every sense of the word. Only when the bowl was empty did Byakuya finally let him go, and Gin rolled back across to the far edge of the futon, trying not to gag. Byakuya's so-called generosity would not extend to helping him to the bathroom or changing his bedding if he had to throw up again, he was sure.

“That will do,” Byakuya announce, thankfully putting an end to the torment. “Tomorrow I expect you to be able to feed and care for yourself, and you will report to me as soon as you are able.”

He waited, as if expecting a reply, but Gin was trying to keep control of his heaving breaths and barely heard him. Apparently his convulsions were taken as the next best thing to consent, because when he next became more aware of his surroundings, Byakuya was gone. 

_Good riddance_ , Gin thought, trying not to dwell on that fleeting moment of relief when the noble had held the cup to his lips, his fingers almost gentle under Gin's jaw. Unfortunately, it was one of the few instances of pleasantness he could recall in the decomposing ruin of his life, so he was forced to settle for that paltry, meaningless kindness. It was the best he had.


	2. Chapter 2

This time he couldn't exactly be sure when he'd woken up, or how long he'd been staring at the ceiling in the darkness, not thinking, not aware of anything except the quiet. It had been so long he'd almost forgotten what it was like to feel more than half-dead, almost at peace. His internal organs seemed to have sorted themselves out, and so long as he didn't think about it too hard, nothing hurt too badly.

He also had ten fingers again. That had been something of a delight to discover. Also a concern, because it meant that at some point Inoue Orihime, not a quiet girl by any means, had managed to come in and reattach his digits while he was completely oblivious. And by extension, any number of people could have come in and done any number of things and he'd never know about it.

Such an appalling failure of his senses was disturbing. Perhaps he'd been sicker than he'd originally thought. 

And now he had to decide what he was going to do...and somehow manage that without thinking too deeply about anything at all, because that was a dangerous pasttime. Every time he got lost inside himself, less pieces came back intact, and he'd need what was left of his wits to somehow not fall apart.

(Again. Like it could possibly matter now.)

Tempting as it was to lie here and never move, he didn't think he could get away with that for long. Byakuya obviously expected him to be mostly recovered by today regardless of how impossible that expectation was, and Gin didn't think he was in any shape to be fooling the sharp-eyed Captain of the Sixth. Not just yet. 

Which left him with only one real choice, unless he wanted to lose his newly regained fingers. Perhaps it would have bothered him before that he didn't even try very hard to fight against it, but his pride had obviously decided he was better off without it because it hadn't chosen to return. Figures something like that would leave too, along with any possible friend, respect, power, dignity, and most of his memories. The rest of them probably wouldn't stick around for much longer either, and with them would go the last of his sanity. 

Then he'd have nothing...and Byakuya would have a useless slave, just as everyone, including Gin himself, had suspected he would. That was probably just the way things were meant to be.

He got out of bed, moving carefully, but this time his body was feeling generous enough to let him stand and walk, although without much grace or ease. It was still dark outside, but there was a hint of lightening green mingling with the shadows, suggesting dawn wasn't all that far off. Gin limped into the bathroom, closed the door with an almost painful sense of relief, and stripped off his clothing, trying to judge the state of his body in the near-darkness as objectively as he could. He deafened all the echoes of callous jeering with the more pragmatic assessment he'd learned as a soldier in the field.

Orihime was kind, and perhaps unlike with Hanatarou, Byakuya hadn't been watching, because along with the return of his fingers Gin's skin wasn't looking quite as mottled with bruises as he'd remembered it. The raw chafing around his wrists from months of imprisonment was almost gone, and so were the scratches on his face. There was nothing changed about the pronounced bones of his ribs or the sickly thinness of his limbs, but even at the height of his Captaincy with all the food he could have wanted, Gin had always been on the leaner side of a healthy weight. He doubted that would change any time soon.

The tattoo on his back was still sensitive. Perhaps it always would be, eternally struggling to keep Shinsou locked deep down inside of him, but at least it didn't burn so fiercely now. It was something he could live with.

It would have to be enough. Gin had always been a survivor, and being hated and looked down upon hadn't killed him just yet. He turned on the shower and washed himself thoroughly, scrubbing away lingering ghosts and any residual trace of uncleanliness. He didn't quite succeed in banishing it all away, but nothing short of stripping his skin off would accomplish that.

Next he had to figure out what to wear. Wrapping a towel securely around his thin chest, he returned to the wardrobe which he hadn't given more than a cursory inspection on his first tour of the room. He really hadn't expected much, but perhaps he was underestimating the wealth of the Kuchiki family. It shouldn't have surprised him that they could spare the resources to clothe a slave, not just in the bare minimum required for decency, but for what appeared to be a number of occasions, many of which Gin likely wouldn't last long enough to attend. The majority of his wardrobe, however, seemed to consist of a simple white uniform that was quite similar to that worn by the servants of the House. The only difference was that theirs was in a muted shade of blue. Gin suspected he knew the reason for that. White was a symbolic colour. It meant he'd been stripped of everything, marking him no one would make the mistake of thinking he was anything like a real person.

Gin sighed. As he'd discovered in Hueco Mundo, white wasn't really his colour. It only emphasised the unnatural paleness of his complexion, his hair. Still, he donned it anyway, surprised by the softness of the cloth. Expensive stuff. Wasted on someone like him.

Now he was as respectable as he could possibly be...and it still took him three tries to work up the nerve to leave the room. He tried to convince himself that there wasn't anything to worry about –what more could the Kuchiki family possibly do to him? - but even though he was well acquainted with all sorts of torturous answers to that question that mostly wouldn't work on him, there were a few that would. He would not think of chains or hands or faceless mockery.

Instead he thought of Aizen, and the mask Gin had learned to don as meagre protection against his former Captain's smiling savagery. It was oddly comforting; at least those humiliations Gin had grown quite comfortable with, over the years.

It worked. He managed to leave the room, out into the extravagant corridors of the Kuchiki mansion, a convoluted labyrinth of opulence...and he realised he had absolutely no idea where to find Byakuya in all this. Perhaps he'd been told, but the knowledge escaped him now. 

He almost retreated inside his room again, but somehow he knew Byakuya wouldn't accept ignorance as an excuse, meaning he had to steel himself and start looking. Or find someone who would give him directions. _Ha_.

He set out at random, cursing the fact that his problems would have been easily solved without the sealing tattoo cutting off all ability to track a person's reiatsu. Unless someone was actively projecting their power in his vicinity, he couldn't sense a thing, and now that he cared to think about it, it was unnerving. Even Hueco Mundo had been seething with conflicting, hungry powers, though they'd all possessed the Hollow taint. The Kuchiki mansion felt empty and dead to him. It was surreal, as if nothing really existed.

Except that it obviously wasn't empty. Gin could hear people moving around, even at this hour, and after a few minutes of searching he found the source of the noise. Servants, moving quietly and quickly scurrying around like mice, attending to their chores before their masters awoke for the day and could be offended by something as unsightly as their workers' presences. They all gave Gin a wide berth, which was smart, but also annoying. He had to time his moment carefully, hiding partially in a small alcove, and when an unwary servant finally strode past he reached out and grabbed her.

She shrieked. Probably not very surprising, but it was piercingly loud and Gin winced, slapping a hand over her mouth. “Be quiet.”

She silenced herself, shockingly...or perhaps not. Gin had plenty of practice at terrifying people into obedience. It was rather gratifying to realise he hadn't lost that entirely. In fact, the poor girl was quivering like a leaf. He leered at her pleasantly. “Now, now, don't be like that. I just need to ask you for directions. I'll let you go if you promise not to make a fuss.”

The servant nodded desperately. She might have had just a little trouble breathing with Gin's hand in the way, but he was sure her assurance was exceedingly heartfelt. For a moment, he was tempted to linger and turn her into a blubbering pile of fear – apparently the servants hadn't gotten the memo about his disgrace; they were just as appropriately terrified of him as they should be – but he didn't know how much past dawn it was and he needed her to be coherent enough to guide him.

“I'm looking for Kuchiki-taicho's quarters. Tell me how to get there.”

She did, with much stuttering and mumbling, but it was good enough and Gin graciously gave her a pat on the head before sending her stumbling off to resume her duties. After that, not a single servant crossed Gin's path, but thankfully his little helper's directions held true. He found a door emblazoned with the Kuchiki emblem, grandiose enough to be the one he was looking for.

Swallowing down nervousness, Gin knocked.

“Enter.”

There wasn't so much as a delay, and when Gin opened the door, he found Byakuya looking impeccably dressed and neat, as if he'd been up for hours. As if he'd never slept, and never needed to. His quarters were just as faultlessly tidy, and Gin did a good job of pretending he wasn't a little awed by the extravagance. 

He didn't look directly at Byakuya, of course. Only carefully, out of his peripheral vision, did he take stock of the man's expression which was blank except for the hard judgement in his eyes. Here was the moment of truth.

Gin choked down his indignation. He knew well enough what was expected of him now, and he knew the price of not doing it. With a slowness that could almost be attributed to his recent illness, he got down on his knees a respectful distance from where Byakuya was seated, and bowed.

And waited, eyes on the floor, not knowing at all what to expect.

“You're early.”

Byakuya's tone was so bland, Gin didn't think he should read any approval into it, but perhaps not any disapproval either. He waited, because he wasn't sure how to answer that, and didn't think Byakuya really expected a response anyway.

“Although I hear you found the need to terrify one of my other servants on your way here.”

Funny how that news had travelled faster than Gin had. Gin supposed it shouldn't surprise him that Byakuya had been keeping him watched.

“I just needed directions,” he murmured, trying to sound contrite. A moment later he realised that perhaps he should have tacked some kind of respectful honorific on to the end of that sentence, but it was a little too late now. Byakuya stood, and Gin's heart dropped.

“Hold out your hand, slave.”

He was going to lose his fingers again. It was grossly unfair; he'd only just gotten them back! But even knowing what was coming, he didn't dare refuse. He held out his left arm again – those fingers he could afford to lose more than on his right hand – and tried to keep it from quaking too badly. With luck, he'd just have to give a thoroughly humiliating apology to the servant girl, and perhaps Byakuya would let him have them back again before the end of the week.

The Captain drew his zanpakuto with what Gin was sure was deliberate slowness and cruelty, and he braced himself for the blow, but instead of a swing Byakuya first held a hand over his sword, murmuring something that it took Gin a moment to recognise.

_Kidou spell?_

And then Byakuya pressed his sword flat against Gin's outstretched palm, and after a second of confusion about why Byakuya hadn't employed the blade he realised that the metal _burned_. He yelped, trying to yank his hand away, but Byakuya already had a hold over his fingers and forced them to close around Senbonzakura's edge, making him _hold_ the scalding metal for a long moment in which Gin tried not to cry out, doubling over at the pain. The moment he was released he yanked his hand protectively to his chest, anxiously surveying the damage, but it wasn't quite as bad as he'd feared. The burn was a fierce red, but while it had blistered the skin, it didn't look too terrible. 

“I don't want you to have any misconceptions about your place,” Byakuya told him, his voice almost disinterested. “As a slave, you're even lower than a servant. You rank on the same level as the animals of the household. You will give your respect to everyone, because you are _beneath_ everyone. If you have need of assistance, you will ask for it politely as you would from any member of the nobility.”

If he'd tried that, Gin thought sourly, none of them would have ever spoken to him, and he'd have been wandering the halls lost for hours. Not that Byakuya probably cared, really, that Gin would have only failed and thus incurred more punishment. There was no fairness, no justice, for a condemned criminal.

“Because you have otherwise done your best to fulfil my wishes, I'll leave you the use of your hand this time. I expect you to be grateful for such leniency.”

This was a joke. Utterly outrageous...but Gin had signed his life away already. Curling around his injured hand, he forced himself to bow lower, trying to unclench gritted teeth. “Thank you, Kuchiki-sama.”

Gin could play this game. It wasn't so different from Aizen's, really, except that Aizen had allowed the pretence that let Gin hold onto his pride even though he could have torn that away from Gin at any moment he'd really wanted to. He hadn't, only because Gin wouldn't have been quite so useful to him without it as an incentive to try harder, get stronger, to meet Aizen's ends.

Byakuya regarded him silently for what seemed like several long minutes, and under that scrutiny Gin felt his anger melt into helplessness, and then into despair. As low as an animal in the household; a possession, a _thing_. He was going to fail. He was useless as a servant, he couldn't ask for help. He dimly remembered listing all the things he couldn't do to the Soutaichou in the Tower of Penitence, and it hadn't been an understatement.

It had been one thing to know he was going to die. Now he had to live with the fact that first he would be degraded in every possible sense beforehand, including being forced to live with the dangling hope that just maybe if he could succeed at some of the impossible tasks Byakuya would set him, he might get a chance to live. Only, should some miracle occur, it would just be a life filled with yet more humiliation.

It was cruel, so very cruel.

“Sit up, Gin.”

_Gin_ , he noted. It wasn't the first time Byakuya had called him that either, so unusually personal for a man who'd once barely contained his distaste enough to call Gin by his rightful rank. Odd, because only Aizen and Rangiku had called him _Gin_ , with that odd affectation of intimacy that no one else dared claim. That no one even wanted.

But Byakuya owned everything about him now, including his name, so Gin supposed he had a right to use it. It was marginally better than 'slave', even if Gin wasn't sure he liked it.

His forehead was pressing against the floor. He wearily lifted it, eyes still pointing downwards, but there wasn't even traces of dust between the floorboards to stare at. He looked at his folded hands instead, noticing that the skin around the blisters was already whitening, threatening to peel.

“Come closer.”

And _now_ what was he to be punished for? Dread was a sick knot lodged below his throat as Gin shuffled closer on his knees. With every inch it felt like something heavy was weighing down harder on his shoulders. He had to resist the urge to grovel, and it was such a ludicrous thought it might have made him smile if forcing such an expression wouldn't have been too painful. He moved until Byakuya's knees were more or less right in front of his eyes, and beyond them, he could once again see Senbonzakura resting harmlessly in its sheath. Gin wasn't sure if that was a good sign; Byakuya was just as capable of hitting him in a more visceral fashion, but the next order given was utterly unexpected.

“Now look at me.”

He almost obeyed, just out of reflex, but even with permission Gin had no real desire to find out what expression Byakuya was wearing right now. His eyes skirted upwards, and then darted to the side before reaching the Captain's shoulders. He braced for a hit, but Byakuya only moved with slow deliberation as his hand came up to encircle Gin's neck, above the collar, and firmly coaxed his head into an angle that forced him to look Byakuya in the face.

Byakuya...didn't look much different from usual, really. Expressionless, aside from the scrutiny. Whatever contempt he must surely have felt was expertly hidden, which Gin supposed he should have been mildly thankful for. It didn't stop his breath from coming faster in short, anxious pants. He didn't want to see the moment the other man's hatred finally surfaced. Gin squeezed his eyes shut, trying to wish himself anywhere but here.

“I truly hadn't expected you to break so quickly,” Byakuya murmured, angling Gin's face from side to side as if looking for those hairline fractures, and Gin flinched again because he _knew_. Though surely it had been obvious to everyone in that room. A former Captain quivering pathetically on the floor, an utter disgrace to the Gotei 13. 

Byakuya was wrong, though. The breaking had been a long time in coming, practically inevitable. Aizen had worked him over quite thoroughly, through the decades of their association. Gin was no better off than Hinamori, really, half-mad and rabid on the inside. The only difference was that Aizen had left the task of letting Gin be finally broken in someone else's hands, and Gin hadn't disappointed. Just a few crass comments, and one small, indecent violation in front of unfriendly eyes. Kind of pathetic, really. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. 

He cringed in Byakuya's grip, deciding that maybe he'd take his chances with amnesia and insanity if it got him away from this swallowing feeling of inadequacy. He loosened his grasp on reality, sinking away from the moment, from his own body-

-only to be slapped back to his senses with one prim motion. Gin reeled, and might have fallen back out of Byakuya's hold if the man hadn't wisely found a secure hold on his shirt.

“I believe I told you to look at me.”

Painfully, Gin did, trying to keep his eyes open without really seeing anything, but little details kept piercing through his attempt at obliviousness. The shadow under the elegant curve of Byakuya's cheekbone. The seemingly effortless sleekness of his hair. The disapproving line of his lips which, up close, looked disturbingly soft and inviting.

He vaguely remembered his former conviction that Kuchiki Byakuya was a man to be admired from a distance only. What he was doing, right at that second, was frankly suicidal.

So instead of gaping at the man in fear, he was very much trying not to stare at him in another, equally inappropriate manner. Worse still was the way Byakuya was looking at him, scrutinising closely, as if gauging his worth. It was almost as if he was trying to figure out what Gin was thinking, and if he figured it out Gin was going to be so very dead and no contract, no matter how binding, would save him.

He tried to think of nothing at all, and eventually Byakuya pulled away with a nearly unvoiced sigh. “When you were Captain of the Third, you grew persimmon trees in your courtyard, correct?”

It was such a non-sequential question, and it took Gin a moment to re-engage his higher functions in a manner that didn't involve wondering what sort of shampoo Byakuya used to keep his hair looking like that. “Ah...yes?”

“So you know _something_ of gardening, yes?” The way Byakuya said it, he obviously didn't think that 'something' was very impressive. He'd be right about that. Gin had cultivated persimmon trees out of survival once, and boredom later. He hadn't needed the extra fruit when he could have bought it on his Division's budget at any time of year he'd liked, but it had been a rewarding way to pass the time and it had made Rangiku happy once, when he'd cared about that. 

Outside of that, however, his knowledge was fairly limited, and so he felt legitimately wary about answering, “Yes...”

“Then until I direct you otherwise, you'll be responsible for the care of my private garden. You will also feed the fish in the koi pond. I assume even someone like you would find it difficult to kill them all inside of a week.”

Gin wondered what was happening in a week, and then remembered that Byakuya most likely had to return to manning his division at some point. Still, _fish_ sounded relatively harmless. He didn't have to get too close and so long as he didn't tempt fate by offering them his fingers, he should be fine. He nodded silently, faintly relieved that his first apparent duty actually sounded like something he might be able to do.

But surely there was a catch. Unable to help himself, Gin looked back at Byakuya's face, not sure if he hoped for or feared for some cruel twist in Byakuya's lips, a glint of smugness in his eyes, or perhaps just another sudden, brutal blow.

There was none of any of those, and apparently Gin wasn't yet prohibited again from looking again. Byakuya's expression was placid. “I told you I wasn't expecting miracles from you. The simpleness of the task should suffice, while you're still healing.”

Which meant the worse was yet to come, but at least Gin could get some of his strength back first. He bowed again, and muttered a thank you that didn't sound too forced or faked.

Hell was probably freezing over right this second.

* * *

He shouldn't have been surprised at all to discover that Byakuya's private garden was the same one he'd woken up in that first day; the one with the obscenely pretty sakura tree. It was a fairly large space, easily accessible from Byakuya's sleeping quarters and walled off from the rest of the estate for extra privacy. The grass was perfectly trimmed, the promised koi pond expertly sculpted. Everything was just teeth-achingly flawless except for a couple of dark spots on the lawn that had once been puddles of Gin's blood, and even those had been covered over with a fine layer of dirt to disguise their imperfection. 

In other words, there wasn't a damn thing for Gin to do here. Nothing in his limited skillset could have possibly improved the state of the garden, by any means, which meant that after the five or so minutes he'd need to feed the fish he was looking at a very empty afternoon of watching the clouds shimmy overhead.

_Surely_ there was a catch. Byakuya had said he wouldn't tolerate laziness...unless this was some belated allowance for the fact that Gin had been throwing up blood two days before, followed by a day of feverish incoherence. Gin somehow doubted it, because _mercy_ just didn't seem like Byakuya's style, but otherwise he was at a loss to explain it.

At the council meeting, he could remember (along with a whole host of things that he wished he could forget) Byakuya saying he had an actual use for Gin. Something that surely involved more than this farce of a job he'd been given, unless he'd put Gin here as some sort of scarecrow to frighten off birds and other unwanted visitors.

Thinking about it was giving him a headache.

It was a really lovely day, too. Warm and sunny, but not enough to make him feel like he was going to faint from the heat this time. The pond rippled with picturesque beauty when he approached, but the fish seemed amiable enough, or were perhaps simply oblivious to anything outside their water because they didn't care for anything but the availability of food that Gin was providing. Byakuya had drilled him with instructions on what and how much they were to be given, and on those simple directions the feeding process went without any significant disasters.

_Now what?_

Gin lay back on the grass, luxuriating in the shade of the sakura tree which extended to the edge of the pond, and for a minute he just allowed himself the unexpected marvel of being _alive_ and _outside_. Even if this was really only another cage, at least it was a nice one. The air was sweet with the fragrance of flowers and fresh water, and he damned the risk of grass stains on the white of his clothes as he stretched out, sighing, wondering for just the briefest of moments if maybe, just maybe, this was something he could actually get used to.

“Oi, Ichimaru.”

He allowed himself a deeper sigh as he rolled back up into a sitting position, mouth thinning at Rukia's approach. No, he wasn't happy to see her again, but he was meant to treat her as second to her brother, and he really didn't want the little girl to run crying to Byakuya for any number of possible offences. Today, he'd force his best behaviour, and maybe the burn would be the worst he'd have to deal with.

So he shifted to his knees and bowed, pretending it didn't sting. “Rukia-sama.”

“You've learned manners,” she said, sounding exaggeratedly incredulous, just for his benefit. “That didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. My brother must be pleased.”

Come to think of it, Byakuya probably was feeling rather smug about that turn of events. Bastard.

“Did you need something?” he asked before she could continue on that particular tangent that would only emphasis what a terrible state of affairs Gin had gotten himself stuck in. He didn't want to hear it.

“Hm? Oh yes.” She'd had something in her arms, Gin had noticed while he hadn't been looking at her face. Piled high with papers and envelopes. “You can write, yes?”

There were any number of answers to that question, many of them obscene. Gin wisely bit down on them, knowing she was probably aiming to get some sort of a reaction since he hadn't yet given her an excuse to have him punished. Little point in reminding her that he'd been a _Captain_ of the Gotei 13, and one didn't get that far through the ranks without first conquering a veritable mountain of paperwork. True, a lot of Rukongai citizens came to the Academy illiterate, and Gin had been no exception, but he'd mastered that skill along with every other and had still finished all of his training in under a year with nothing to hold him back.

_And how long did it take **you** , Rukia-chan?_

But he didn't ask that, and he swallowed back all the scathing comments that wanted to make themselves known and simply ground of, “Of course.”

“Good.”

She dropped her armload in front of his face. Papers went flying everywhere in a haphazard pile, and Gin wondered if it was too late to revise his answer to that question because he had a feeling he wasn't going to like her next proposal.

“Then you can write out the invitations for my wedding. The list is on the bottom, and I'll be checking to make sure you haven't forgotten anyone.”

The pile of paper was nearly half as tall as he was, kneeling down, and he looked at it dubiously. “How many people are you inviting?”

“Oh...you know. Just a few friends.” Rukia shook a hand airily. “And associates of the Kuchiki house. Noble weddings are large affairs, you know.”

Apparently so...but the act Rukia was putting on for him wasn't quite as seamless as she'd want him to believe. It was a little harder to tell, because he wasn't looking at her face, but he had a feeling there was a part of the story he was missing. He wondered if he cared enough to be curious about it.

“I expect them to be neat,” Rukia told him primly. “Don't think I won't make you redo them if they aren't. Just bring them to me when you're finished.”

She strode away, nose held high, most likely, probably feeling entirely smug with herself for giving him such a mind-numbingly tedious task. This was much more like what he'd expected to have to put up with, and he frowned unhappily as he realised he might just end up becoming Kuchiki Rukia's bridesmaid after all.


	3. Chapter 3

He hadn't finished Rukia's chore, not even with the whole afternoon to do it, but thankfully that had garnered him only a long-suffering eye-roll from her and an ominous warning from her brother. It hadn't really been his fault; his hands were still weak from spending too long in shackles, and Rukia had discarded his first twenty attempts because they hadn't been elegant enough for her tastes. His right hand was cramping badly enough that the ache rivalled the burn on his other for annoyance when he reported to Byakuya the next morning. 

“You can assist my sister again today, along with the other chores I've already assigned you,” Byakuya ordered him, and then apparently dismissed him out of mind to get on with whatever it was nobles did with all their free time. Gin wondered what the Soutaichou would think to know he'd more or less just given Byakuya a holiday in place of whatever training Gin had been supposed to be receiving. Then again, convincing Gin to obey had probably been the main intent of that leave period, and that had been accomplished in an embarrassingly short amount of time. It was almost enough to make Gin start considering re-voicing his protest, but Byakuya had looked a little short of temper along with his distraction that morning, and so Gin decided that maybe he'd give it another day or two.

Today, he'd try and get through at least _once_ without incurring any serious bodily harm or punishment. It wasn't really too much to ask.

First, though, he had to report to the kitchens in order to get the food for the fish. Yesterday, Byakuya had gone with him and had gotten immediate service and attention, but only for the purposes of showing Gin where to go. Today he was going to have to mange it himself, and that meant somehow convincing the kitchen servants to talk to him without breaking any of the rules he'd been set. Ignoring the sear of bitterness on his tongue, Gin had gotten down on his knees near the kitchen entryway and waited.

And waited. And waited.

They ignored him for a good twenty minutes, during which Gin stubbornly decided he'd damn well stay there for as long as it took, getting underfoot and blocking the door until someone got sick of him and finally gave in. It worked, eventually, without taking quite as long as he'd feared it might, and eventually one of the no-nonsense, matronly kitchen hands demanded that he state his business and leave.

Gin offered her an appropriately meek request for the fish food and, buoyed by the success when he actually got it, dared to ask for breakfast as well and surprisingly managed to get that too. If Byakuya had a problem with his gauntness, then really Gin was only trying to appease him in taking care of that, which hopefully meant that maybe he'd be able to eat more than once every month or so.

All things considered, his morning had started off not too horribly. He really should have taken that as a sign to brace himself.

The garden still looked beautifully tended, not at all harmed by his skilful do-nothing approach to caring for it. Since it was obviously working, he resolved to do exactly the same today, and once again found his comfortable patch under the sakura tree to sit with the absurdly high stack of invitations he was meant to be writing. Beside him was his hard-earned bowl of rice, and the food crumbs for the Koi for when his hand needed a break from the merciless task.

Most of the invitations, he'd discovered, were being sent to far-flung branches of the Kuchiki family, and what seemed like every lesser noble in the Seireitei, and Gin would be damned if Rukia knew who even half of them were. It was pure politics, Gin was sure, and now Rukia's hollow gloating made a little more sense. Even if she had a thousand witnesses to honour her wedding, most of them wouldn't care who she was in the slightest. All they wanted was the approval of her clan.

Poor little rich girl, he mused, savagely blotting the final words of the invitation onto the paper when he was jolted from his thoughts by a shift of movement behind him and a passionately exhaled, “ _Ugh_. Look over there.”

The words weren't directed at him. Gin turned and found himself confronted with two strangers...or not strangers? There was a woman dressed in finery, an ornate parasol resting on her shoulder and a thickly embroidered obi at her waist. She had streaks of grey in her hair, and seemed much older than her male companion who looked closer to Byakuya's age and in whom the family resemblance was so strikingly obvious. He must have been a cousin of some kind, but both of them had the dark hair and grey eyes of the Kuchiki family.

And having noted that, Gin made sure to lower _his_ eyes again as the woman continued, “It's Byakuya-kun's new slave. I saw him at the Council meeting.”

Any amusement at hearing the intimidating Captain referred to as _Byakuya-kun_ was utterly overridden by the sickening knowledge that this woman must have been one of the jeering witnesses to his shame. There was something abut her voice that struck a discordant note in his memory that tried to bring a helpless flush to his cheeks. He shoved the feeling down, imitating stone, as if he were just another part of the garden.

Except apparently that didn't stop them from being able to see him. 

“The criminal?” the young man replied, sounding unabashedly intrigued and not in any way Gin was comfortable with. He sounded just as arrogant as Byakuya, but cocky...and he had just the smallest hint of reiatsu in him. Not much at all – Gin had met academy students with more than that. It was just enough to raise an eyebrow, but not nearly enough to guarantee promotion, and Gin suspected this particular nobleman hadn't made any sort of attempt at the training. The Kuchiki's gave only their best, and hid their worst behind closed doors, not willing to risk the shame of an untalented recruit. It made him smirk inwardly. The man's reiatsu puffed out in what was probably supposed to be an intimidating fashion, but even for Gin in his powerless state, it only tickled a bit.

Still, apparently the having of it was enough to inflate his sense of self-importance. Enough that he strode fearlessly over to Gin and lifted the former Captain's head up by a handful of silver hair to get a better look at him.

“ _This_ was a Captain? What kind of filth are they letting into the Gotei 13 these days?”

“Disgusting, isn't it?” the woman said more demurely, although she didn't seem inclined to come any closer, as if just being in Gin's vicinity was bad enough. “He's nothing but a snivelling coward too. You should have seen him...”

There might have been more to that sentence, but Gin desperately blocked it out. He didn't need those memories trying to surface again. Already he could feel a creeping nausea churning restlessly in the pit of his stomach. Under other circumstances, his first response would have been to break the fingers pulling savagely at his hair – even without reiatsu of his own he could probably manage that – but the woman's words had made his muscles lock up, his blood running cold in spite of the sun shining warmly overhead.

He wouldn't fold again. Not like this, not so easily, but his hands felt slow and stupid as he scrabbled to unhook the man's hold on his hair. He obviously didn't appreciate the attempt, because in the next moment he released Gin only to follow up with a nasty kick to the face. Even with only that pitiful lick of reiatsu behind it, Gin was off-guard enough that it caught him in the mouth, managing to split his lip which had already seen a fair amount of abuse lately. It knocked him backwards, and one of his outflung arms toppled his neat stacks of finished invitations. To his grief, a few of them slid over the grass, caught by momentum, and wafted right into the pond.

“Hey-!”

“Mind your betters, slave,” the man told him savagely. “You got my sandal dirty. Now apologise.”

Gin growled under his breath, showing bloody teeth, but as much as he wanted to retaliate he knew it wouldn't get him anywhere. He could see the sharp-eyed Aunt in the background watching them, obviously keeping an internal tally of all Gin's wrongdoings that no doubt Byakuya would hear about later. The idea of losing a hand, or maybe his tongue this time, for getting blood on the bastard's shoe held no appeal whatsoever. 

He righted himself back onto his knees, casting a sour look at the invitations that were starting to sink below the water, drawing a cursory investigation from the koi. He could see the ink dispersing, curling away in dark clouds. Hopefully it wasn't poisonous to fish.

His spine felt like it was made of rusted wire as he jerkily bent forwards, offering a pained bow. “I apologise.”

_That you're an arrogant asshole who's too much of an idiot not to step on things you shouldn't_ , went unsaid but perhaps not entirely unheard. The woman's fingers tightened around the pole of her parasol as she noted, “He doesn't sound like he means that.”

“No,” the young man agreed grimly, reaching down, and before Gin could think about how best to avoid it he was dragged up again as the man found a convenient hand-hold on his collar. It was tight enough without any additional yanking, and Gin wheezed as he was half-strangled.

“Try again,” the man demanded, and perhaps he thought himself terribly intimidating, but he had a long way to go before he even held so much as a candle to Byakuya. Up close, now that Gin was forced to actually take a look at him, the resemblance wasn't quite as impressive. This man had obviously gotten the less favourable strain of the genetics. His cheekbones were too angular, his nose too wide, and his lips too thin for the kind of eye-pleasing handsomeness Byakuya possessed.

Gin worked up a nasty smirk for him, in spite of the strangulation. “I'm so sorry Kuchiki-sama's going to have words for you when he finds out you got his sister's invitations wet.”

Gin shouldn't have been tempting fate, but while having Byakuya call him slave was something he was just going to have to put up with, hearing it from some stuck-up cousin who had no claim at all on Gin's person was oddly distasteful. Besides, it was true. If the noble somehow thought Gin would be too intimidated to object to this abuse, he was going to be unpleasantly surprised. He had a suspicion the noble's actions weren't something Byakuya would approve of anyway. He probably needed _permission_ if he wanted to kick Gin in the face.

But snooty little noble brats weren't used to being defied, and perhaps behind the outrage there was a hint of reckless fear that made him stupid enough to do what he did next. The reiatsu behind his next punch was a little more serious, and even though Gin twisted so it caught him across the cheekbone instead of in the eye, it made his head spin a little and he was pushed back again, this time following the invitations right into the pond. 

The water wasn't actually all that deep, he discovered. He could sit up in it perfectly fine, spluttering and still gathering his wits. The koi had wisely darted away which reassured his next fear that they were actually cannibalistic piranha koi that would try and take a bite out of him the moment he got too close. It was a little undignified, being soaking wet, but he'd honestly thought it would end there because otherwise the noble was going to get his own clothes sopping which surely wasn't proper.

Unfortunately, Gin had misjudged that part. He'd thought Kuchiki superiority would win out, but maybe the man didn't like Gin's tone, his face, or anything about him whatsoever because he lunged into the pond after Gin with every intention of seeing this particular blight on the Kuchiki family name blotted out of existence. His knee caught Gin in the gut with most of his weight behind it, and both arms shoved down on the former Captain's shoulders, forcing his head down under the water, whereupon Gin discouragingly discovered two things.

Firstly, was that he wasn't nearly as recovered as he might have liked to think. Too long without food, wasting away with starvation and a hollow emptiness that went more than skin-deep had taken its toll. The Kuchiki cousin, for all his lack of spiritual power, was young and fit and Gin's feeble strength wasn't enough to dislodge the hold forcing him against the sludge at the bottom of the pond.

Secondly, he discovered what actually happened the moment he tried to defy the restrictions of the sealing tattoo.

He'd been warned about it, of course, from the moment it had been etched onto his skin, and up until now he'd been careful to respect that heavy wall blocking away his reiatsu, but the lack of air and desperation as he realised his breath was running out made him react blindly on the deeply ingrained instincts of his training.

And _oh_ did it hurt.

The seal wasn't some soothing blanket resting over his reiatsu, hiding it politely from view. It was a searing brand on his soul that _burned_ , inside and out the moment he tried to claw his way desperately to the power that would have let him flatten this insignificant noble like a bug. The pain was sharper and deeper than the ache in his chest from the lack of air, and he thoughtlessly drew an agonised breath only to feel water rushing thickly into his lungs.

Everything became terribly unclear after that.

Except for the hurt. That was piercing right through him, in the suffocating blackness, and he was sure he was already drowned because before he'd been able to see light and the distorted reflection of his attacker through the surface of the water. Now it was dark. Maybe it was night time, and he was looking through the eyes of his corpse, staring up at a starless sky.

Feed the fish, Byakuya had told him, and hysterically Gin supposed that was exactly what he was going to do. The koi could spend the next couple of weeks picking all the meat off his bones until there was nothing left, and no one would have to bother to dig a grave for him. Not that he'd need one, with no one to mourn him. Not even Rangiku, most likely.

Dimly, he thought he could hear something. Muffled, but forceful, like someone was shouting at a distance. Maybe someone was telling off the bastard nobleman for getting filth in the pond. He tried to ignore it. It was interrupting his hard-earned peace.

And then he felt...what was that? Something pressing against his mouth that felt _warm_ , making him regret just a little that his watery grave was probably always going to be colder than comfortable, but...no, no, he didn't want to feel. Then he'd have to endure dozens of tiny mouths consuming him piece by piece, and if he could still feel that his afterlife was going to be extremely unpleasant when he'd just thought that maybe he'd earned this small solace for himself now he was finally dead.

But the next sensation was a whole lot less friendly. It felt like a kick to the chest, right along the sternum, and the thump of pressure dislodged something that made him aware again of jaw, throat, lungs, and suddenly he was violently vomiting up water through his mouth and, less pleasantly through his nose.

He had no idea of what was happening, where he was, whether there were still hands lodged around his neck or if he was still half-underwater. Every nerve was muddled, his head was swimming, and beneath the over-strained protest of his lungs was a more intense pain. He was raw on the inside, where there could be no easing or relief, and he moaned weakly, wishing for the blackness to come back.

“Gin?”

Vertigo made it hard to tell if he was moved or shaken or if his senses were just extremely confused. He thought cracking his eyes open might help, but the world beyond his eyelids was intolerably bright. The shading of his lashes protected him only a little, but as the haze started to clear it was almost worth the trouble to see Kuchiki Byakuya looking quite unexpectedly bedraggled. His hair was wet, curling in disarrayed ringlets, his kenseikan askew, and the look of intense seriousness on his face suggested something other than apathetic blandness. Gin spent a long moment marvelling dumbly at this novelty, which made Byakuya's expression turn into a frown.

“Are you conscious?” he asked, his tone suggesting he had some serious doubts about that even if Gin's eyes were open. “Speak.”

“Hu-ah?” Gin managed, not bothering to aim for coherence with his wind-pipe still clogged with liquid. He could feel another knot of it coming up and turned to what he thought was the side to cough weakly against the grass. It felt like he'd been swallowing razor blades, not water, and he decided to stave off any questions even though it would have been nice to know what the hell was going on and why Byakuya's hair was wet.

But looking to the side, he caught sight of something else. A few feet away, one vaguely familiar looking cousin was curled up meekly, face-first on the grass, bound in some kind of kidou Gin could only faintly make out. Behind him, the dignified looking aunt seemed rather horrified by the current state of affairs, and was rooted to the spot even without the benefit of a spell. That was probably smart of her. Gin hadn't seen it at first because it didn't seem to be directed at him, but the moment Byakuya's attention shifted it was suddenly palatable obvious that the Captain was _furious_. It was seething out of him in a thick cloud of angry reiatsu that seemed to be doing a good job of cowing his relatives.

But the press of it against Gin's raw nerves didn't do him any favours, and he let out a weak, wounded noise that drew Byakuya's attention back again. With an aggravated sound he drew his reiatsu back in, relieving the painful pressure, and promptly lifted Gin off the ground, one hand beneath his shoulders, the other under his knees. He managed it with a great deal of dignity too, that if Gin hadn't been so stupefied, he'd have been impressed by it. He was taller by a good couple of inches, after all, and had once been nominally heavier. Perhaps not any more, though.

“Do not think this will be forgotten,” Byakuya said to them, and his voice was a pitch below sub-zero, more frigid than Gin had ever heard before. “You will both be held accountable for your actions when I have the time to deal with you.”

The way both relatives withered under Byakuya's gaze was distinctly gratifying. The woman crumpled, bowing, acknowledging the superiority of the Family's Head even despite his youth, while the cousin spluttered out a sentence that was either supposed to be an apology or a protest. He stopped when Byakuya glared at him. The intimidated silence was more acceptable, and Byakuya turned to leave.

Gin's scattered thoughts rolled around aimlessly inside his skull, sloshing like he was still full of liquid, and eventually one in particular caught his attention. Something he'd meant to remember, because it was important. Something he'd had to tell Byakuya, next time he'd seen him.

It took him a few tries to untangle his tongue enough to speak, and it wasn't costless, but his brain assured him this was significant enough to be worth the effort. “I-in...Invitations got wet.”

“Be quiet, Gin,” Byakuya ordered him, although without the same malice that had been directed at his relatives. Gin nodded agreeably and closed his eyes again, not letting himself remember why he wasn't supposed to be going limp in Byakuya's arms.


	4. Chapter 4

He was supposed to be somewhere else. He was pretty sure this wasn't where he belonged, this world with white sands and dark skies and a single, solitary moon staring down uncaringly at the barren desert below. Everything was too quiet, too still for his liking, and yet even in the immensity of his own isolation he was sure there were equally awful places he could just as easily have been.

_Starving in the Rukongai, huddling in torn, dirty clothing that didn't keep out the cold._

_Hated in the Seireitei, surrounded by gazes that were filled with loathing, jealousy or fear._

_Dying in the tower, abandoned, forgotten, and somehow still aware enough to regret when that feeling should have been exorcised out of him long before._

No, no, he didn't want this, experiences like bitter ashes, he wanted-!

“Hello, Gin.”

Gin smiled at the familiarity of that voice, although it was mostly a survivalistic reflex. A smile was a lot safer than any other expression that might have slipped out, so he defaulted to it every single time.

Sometimes he meant it, though.

“Hiya, Aizen-taichou.”

It was still dark, still cold, but now he was on the streets of the Seireitei, and the darkness was _his_ hunting ground. His and Aizen's. The man smiled at him, moonlight reflecting off his glasses in a way that left his eyes thoroughly obscured. He held out a hand. “Come with me. I have something interesting to show you.”

Gin went along trustingly. Not that he trusted Aizen, of course, but the weight of his promises were usually sincere. Something 'interesting' probably meant something fun! Gin's definition of fun. He allowed himself a bloodthirsty grin, following cheerfully in Aizen's wake through darkened streets he didn't recognise to a section of cleared ground that might have been a training area.

At around this point, Gin realised this was a memory he was reliving.

It wasn't like a dream, however. Knowing didn't cause him to wake up, or inspire any sudden urge to do so. Here, at least, he wasn't utterly alone. Aizen-taichou was still with him.

They walked across the clearing which was covered with a thin layer of snow. It was winter, he realised, the chill air biting at his arms, but Gin had endured much worse. The briskness was invigorating, if a little uncomfortable where the snow melted into the fabric of his tabi. The ground was hard beneath his feet, and he realised he was walking over ice, not dirt. The clearing was a frozen lake.

And this was the point where Gin dimly realised that this was a memory he had forgotten. And why he had forgotten it.

But there was no stopping it now. The images played out in front of him, and he couldn't stop his younger self from stepping into a patch where the snow had been partially cleared, and Aizen indicated he should stop.

“Here, Gin. Look down. Tell me what you see.”

Gin obediently did as he was told, and although it was difficult to make out, the glow of the moonlight he let him see something in the shadows of the ice. It was smeared, distorted, but he could make out the recognisable outline of a face. There was a body beneath the frozen surface.

“Ohh,” he said, the sound of acknowledgement and understanding. He leaned down to get a closer look, and jumped in surprise and then delight when the face moved and a clawed hand came up to join it, scraping faintly at the ice. A dark hole opened where the person's mouth would have been, but any words were indistinguishable. Gin looked at Aizen incredulously. “He's still alive?”

“For the moment,” Aizen said pleasantly, as if they were discussing reports over tea in his office. “Probably not much longer, though. There's a small air pocket right beneath your feet, but I don't imagine it can sustain him for long.”

Just long enough. Gin imagined he could hear screaming, hear pleas, and although he couldn't be entirely sure he thought the person under the ice might be their Ninth Seat who had tried to defy Gin's authority the week before and had been scathingly reprimanded for it. Gin had listened from outside the office as the man had told Aizen that Gin was too young, too uncontrolled, too crude and was otherwise utterly unworthy of being Vice Captain of the Fifth. Aizen had obviously filed his concerns away and now had finally gotten around to tending to them.

Which made this little viewing a treat. A gift! Gin wriggled happily, bending down further to watch the man die slowly. He'd watched others die before, some by his own hand, usually at Aizen's direction, but this was something more special. He looked around for Aizen, but the man was no longer in front of Gin. He was behind him, his presence warm against Gin's back like a terrible sun, his whisper soft and seductive against Gin's ear.

“Fascinating, isn't it?” he remarked, a hand on Gin's shoulder. “How desperately he struggles to stay alive when death would be so much kinder. Don't you think, Gin?”

“Yes,” Gin answered, even though suddenly his pleasure was sapped by something much more like concern. Aizen only used _that_ tone of voice when the game was about to change. When the rules were going to shift, to break, and never in Gin's favour. 

“What would you do,” Aizen mused, absently, as if speaking more to himself than Gin, “in the same situation, I wonder?”

The ice cracked alarmingly under Gin's knees, unexpected and unstoppable. Gin was quick to reach out, but Aizen had already stepped back, away from the danger as Gin's slight weight shattered the fragile surface. In that one fraction of a moment, Gin's smile might have broken into wordless horror and disbelief, his last clear view of Aizen showing the man only smiling benevolently, patiently, as Gin fell through the ice into freezing, life-stealing water.

_What's wrong with him?_

He had to hold his breath. He had to find the surface again. He somehow had to ignore the clawing cold that threatened to paralyse his limbs and kick back to the surface.

_I'm...I'm not sure. There's nothing I can find, not physically, at least._

_No brain damage?_

_No. You got him breathing again fast enough. He should be fine._

He reached up to where the hole he'd fallen through should have been – surely he hadn't gotten misdirected?! - but all he could feel was solid ice, thick and seamless under his numb fingers. There was a small space, however, of something above the water, and he awkwardly angled himself to be able to surface in the tiny air pocket, gulping for breath.

_Obviously he isn't._

_B-but I don't think...There's no residual injury. I've checked!_

_Then what?_

He could barely draw breath. His lungs were freezing up, along with the rest of his body. It was a monumental task, trying to keep himself afloat. Even the light weight of his Shinigami uniform was weighing him down, and he could barely see, but he thought maybe he could make out the tall shadow of Aizen against the sky, surrounded by a halo of unearthly moonlight.

“A-aizen-taichou,” he tried to call, but couldn't. No wonder he hadn't heard screaming before. His teeth were chattering too hard, he could barely speak. 

_S-some kind of trauma...?_

_From the drowning?_

_No, I think...something more than that. I've seen Pluses like this, sometimes, when they...when they-_

_What?_

_When they didn't die peacefully._

Gin – the part of him that wasn't so intensely merged with the panic of his younger self - laughed inwardly, although he wasn't quite sure what this dialogue he was hearing was, or why it was intruding on his memory, but he thought that it was kind of funny. _Didn't die peacefully_. Somehow he was sure that the voices were talking about him, and no wonder. His entirely life had been one long episode of _not dying peacefully_. Or simply not having the decency to die. Whichever. 

No, he'd always wanted to live. He'd always struggled, even if it wouldn't be kinder, just like Aizen had said. He'd pounded on the ice, and then tried looking for Shinsou, but his numb fingers hadn't been able to locate his zanpakuto and probably wouldn't have been able to hold it if they had. Then he tried gasping out a kidou spell to melt the ice, but he hadn't been able to get the words out right and all the while the air he was breathing slowly became poison, making him dizzy. Making him weak. 

And he was pretty sure, right at the end when he'd known he wasn't going to make it, he'd felt something yanking on his ankles, dragging him downward. The Ninth Seat, vengefully pulling him down to the bottom.

Only he hadn't died then. No, he'd woken up the next day in his own bed, warm and safe, not a hair out of place. Nothing so much as a hint of frostbite on his fingers, and Shinsou was sitting where it had always rested on the stand beside his bed. And only an hour later he'd walked into Aizen's office and they'd made their usual morning pleasantries. Aizen had kindly offered his hope that Gin had slept well without so much as a smirk or a smile, no hint at all about what had really happened.

Had it been real? An illusion? A dream? Gin had no idea, and he'd never been able to ask. Their Ninth Seat, he'd found, had been assigned a mission in the Human world, and had later disappeared, his status unknown. Presumed dead. No help at all.

And there was nothing Gin could have done about it, not even if it had been real, or even if only parts of it were. So he chose to forget. Forget that memory, and so many others over the years, so he could look at Aizen and forever draw on that reflexive smile even when it was false. 

He almost called upon it again, blinking rapidly to clear his foggy sight, but he wasn't in Aizen's office or out in the streets of the Seireitei, or even back in Hueco Mundo. The white walls of his new room weren't familiar yet, but the sight of Byakuya glaring at him was getting to be more regular. His mouth twitched disapprovingly, and Gin quickly averted his eyes, rubbing at them. They felt sore and dry, like he'd been holding them open too long without blinking. “Kuchiki-sama?”

“You're finally awake,” Byakuya said, with perhaps a little unnecessary emphasis on 'finally'. Then again, from the sun slanting in through the window, it seemed much later in the day than it had been last he'd checked. “What do you remember?”

Ice, and Aizen. But he pushed that memory from his mind and hopefully it would disappear again. There was no point at all in remembering it now.

“Drowning in your koi pond,” Gin said instead, wincing a little as his fingers traced over his face. His cheekbone was tender, and the split in his lip was barely scabbed over. New bruises; joy. “Wonderful family you have.”

It annoyed him that his voice wasn't very strong. The collar seemed to be tighter, or maybe his abused throat had swollen a bit, but he had to work hard to force the words out and it was a tiring business. He shifted his shoulders, noticing that he'd been propped up against the wall on pillows, which at least meant he wasn't conducting this conversation helplessly on his back, but...it seemed odd. If he'd been thoroughly asleep, he'd have slipped sideways. 

He scrubbed his face again, his head feeling emptier than ever in spite of the regained memory. He wondered what else he'd lost in exchange.

“That much I determined for myself,” Byakuya replied, sounding distinctly unimpressed, and certainly not terribly concerned on Gin's behalf. Then again, he knew his own family better than Gin did. The thought was disturbing. Maybe all the Kuchiki's were vicious, kill-happy monsters under their snooty noble exteriors. “You will tell me about the event in detail, from the beginning.”

Gin scowled, his hand dropping to encircle his tender throat. “Go ask them.”

Even without looking at him, Gin was pretty sure he could imagine the haughty look on Byakuya's face. “They tell me you instigated the incident. That you were making threats against the House.”

Gin stared at him for a moment, but...no, really, that shouldn't surprise him in the slightest. He fell back against the pillows, laughing dryly and painfully. “Of course they did.”

“Is it true?”

Did using Byakuya's wrath against his own House count? Gin somehow doubted that was the way they'd insinuated it. No, they'd have made it sound much more damaging, much more terrible, and who wouldn't believe that about Ichimaru Gin, the traitor? He shook his head, only because it was easier than rasping out a sarcastic answer.

“Then explain.”

“What's the point?” Gin asked wearily. He was a slave, and not even an especially well-behaved one. They were Nobles. It was pretty obvious who's side everyone was going to take, and that Gin was going to wind up with some sort of punishment regardless of the circumstances while the worst his attacker would get was a metaphorical slap on the wrist for touching Byakuya's property.

Byakuya didn't reply for a moment, and Gin was pretty sure than any moment now he'd admit that there wasn't one and leave, but when he replied it was with every word enunciated with cold precision, aiming to cut. “Because you will either explain it to me here and now, or you will be taken before the council once again and have to relate it there.”

And those words lodged themselves right into every weakened crack of Gin's resolve. _Byakuya knew_ , there was no question, exactly how Gin would feel about that. How it terrified him, idea of being dragged up before them again, put on display, judged and degraded, helpless to defend himself yet again.

He couldn't do it.

“Gin?”

Gin flinched slightly, enough to tell Byakuya that he was still listening and not completely lost to the lurching fear that threatened to drown everything out. The smallest of sighs escaped the Noble's lips, and Gin couldn't quite decipher it. Discouraged, maybe? But whatever it was didn't reflect in his voice as he continued, “They have violated the rules of the House. No one is supposed to approach you or speak to you without my consent, nor is it acceptable to damage you. The clause of our contract states that while you are in my service you are also under my protection. If you are truly innocent in this matter, then they will be punished.”

Gin was starting to think he really should have read that contract. He'd never stopped to wonder if perhaps there was some clause on his end he could exploit...but the idea evoked none of the expected cheer or malicious glee it should have. He just felt cold. He pulled his knees up under his chin, wrapped his arms around them, and closed his eyes.

And since he really had no choice about it, he told Byakuya what he remembered in as much detail as he could manage. The parts of his memory that weren't missing were often quite vivid; his mind had been perfectly capable once, quick and agile, even hungry for more knowledge until he'd accidentally crossed that unknown boundary and found he'd known too much. That knowing was not safe any more, not even in his own head.

Accurate, succinct reports were an integral skill for a good soldier, and being Aizen's Lieutenant had also demanded a certain amount of excellence. Gin knew to report what he'd seen without attempting to embellish (Aizen had always been able to catch him out at it), although it got much more difficult to recall any clear details after he'd gone into the water. The only part he'd chosen to edit out of his dialogue was his (despairingly unsuccessful) attempt to break the seal. No need to put anyone's mind at rest with the knowledge that he couldn't do it even if it killed him. It was enough to imply that he wasn't exactly at the peak of his health, and the man had managed to take him by surprise.

“And after that?” Byakuya pressed, and even in his exhaustion Gin found himself annoyed. No doubt a perfectionist like Byakuya would want explicit details of his time unconscious just so there wouldn't be any unsightly holes in his report. Well too damn bad, because everything between that and waking up in this room was a murky blur of hazy sensations and contextless images. 

_Except...wet hair...?_

“Did you...?” Gin started, frowning deeply at that surprisingly clear memory. Byakuya's hair plastered wetly to the sides of his face, water droplets beading on his eyelashes, his lips...Gin hadn't thought too hard yet about how he'd gotten _out_ of the water, and the fragments he remembered didn't make any sense. “Were you-?”

“I was the one who resuscitated you,” Byakuya replied, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Gin wasn't sure he'd heard right. He was also gaping in what was probably a very undignified manner and Byakuya went on, “One of the servants I've had watching you witnessed the beginnings of the altercation and thought that my intervention may have been required. I arrived in time to pull you from the water.”

Gin wasn't sure which concept he was having more trouble with. The fact that Byakuya had given him _mouth-to-mouth_ (didn't he remember something like that, a fleeting sensation he hadn't quite identified?), or the fact that he'd even bothered to lift a single finger to help Gin at all. No one would have blamed him, Gin was sure, if he'd said he'd arrived a moment too late. If he'd said Gin couldn't have been revived without even bothering to attempt it.

His scepticism must have shown, because Byakuya was quick to remind him, “You're not allowed to die in my care within the first three months. I'm obligated to adhere to the terms of the contract.”

“What happens if you don't?” Gin asked, curious.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Byakuya arch one elegant eyebrow. “My honour would be diminished.”

So...nothing, in other words. Maybe it made sense if you actually _had_ honour, which Gin had fortunately found himself unburdened with. He snorted. “Right.”

“You should show your gratitude,” Byakuya advised him.

Gin thought about that. It was probably a good thing, not being dead, but just at that moment he wasn't entirely sure he was grateful. “Are you going to put me back in the pond if I don't?”

Byakuya seemed to consider it. “No. It would simply be an ideal time for you to start honing your manners before they get you into further trouble.”

No doubt. Gin leaned back heavily against the pillows, his body aching. “You shouldn't have bothered.”

“You shouldn't have signed the contract,” Byakuya countered. “But since you did, do not expect me to default the terms simply because the situation no longer suits you.”

Gin hadn't been the only one to sign, though, and he'd had a hell of a lot more incentive to do so than Byakuya had. What the Noble's intentions had been, Gin couldn't even guess, and although he was curious about it he refrained from the temptation of asking. For one, he wasn't sure Byakuya would give him a straight answer – the council hadn't gotten one, despite their careful, insistent enquiries – and if by some chance Byakuya did deign to tell him...Gin didn't think he'd like it. At least if he didn't know, he could pretend to believe that maybe Rangiku's offered bribe had been the deciding factor. No doubt she'd given the Kuchiki family head the opportunity to become better acquainted with her beautiful cleavage; a favour not many men could have resisted, even one as repressed as Byakuya supposedly was. Given the Captain's frigidity, he probably hadn't seen any sort of action since his wife had died several decades back...if one discounted the sort of unfortunate intimacies that had been required to get Gin breathing again.

Not that Gin was thinking about it. Not at all.

“For now, you're excused from your assigned chores for the rest of the day,” Byakuya announced, piercing through Gin's (blank and completely uninteresting!) thoughts. The noble sounded less than pleased about this state of affairs as he rose to leave, smoothing out his robes. “This matter needs to be resolved as quickly as possible and for the moment I think it's best that you're kept out of sight so there can be no further misunderstandings.”

As if it had been _his_ fault. Then again, Gin wasn't going to complain. He still felt distinctly waterlogged, even though at some point his clothing must have been changed. He wondered if Byakuya had done that as well.

“I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from inciting any further attempts on your life,” Byakuya added dryly. “Dealing with the aftermath is quite tiresome.”

After he'd left, Gin wondered if that had been a very bland attempt at humour, but decided that was probably impossible. Kuchiki Byakuya possessed no such thing.


	5. Chapter 5

After three months of curling up in a cold corner of the Tower of Penitence, the novelty of a soft bed and real, healthy sleep shouldn't have worn off so quickly, but Gin found himself restless and that led to too many uncomfortable thoughts trying to vie for his attention. He'd had more than enough time to think (slowly losing his mind) whilst staring down his execution. Absurdly, he found himself wishing he was still writing out those damn invitations. At least it would have kept him occupied.

Trying _not_ to think of something was almost the surest way to keep it persisting in his memory, so he tried to distract himself instead. He paced his tiny quarters. He took a shower when he realised the tepid scent of the pond was still lingering on his skin. He spend a bit of time admiring his new bruises, which were starting to turn quite colourful. He stared out his window into the tiny courtyard until it grew too dark to see. In desperation, he even found Byakuya's little black book of rules and set about memorising the list properly this time, hoping that the dreary task would convince his brain to conveniently turn itself off for a while.

That turned out to be the worst idea of the lot, because staring at Byakuya's neat, cursive script eventually got him to thinking about the noble's elegant, fine-boned hands, and from there it was a helpless journey up past the pale undersides of his wrists to the proud set of his shoulders, to collarbones, to jaw, to mouth.

The book got thrown across the room, and Gin spent several minutes unsuccessfully trying to smother himself with his pillows. He should have felt a lot more disgusted about the whole thing. A lot more _violated_. The fact that he only felt the faint urge to squirm, combined with a heated feeling he convinced himself wasn't embarrassment (or anything even more appalling) was really his greatest cause for concern.

It wasn't like Byakuya had even batted an eyelid over it, which was all the more reason not to dwell on it. No, for him it had just been a matter of procedure, drilled into every Shinigami during the compulsory first aid training required even by those who would never be destined for the Fourth. Gin had taken those lessons too, ever a diligent student when it came to proving the superiority of his own training despite his quick advancement through the ranks.

_Move the body to a safe area. Clear airways. Check pulse._

He had a rather impressive bruise over his sternum, and supposed he should count himself lucky. Chest compressions could easily break ribs even when done by someone skilled in the technique, and somehow he couldn't imagine Byakuya spent much time rescuing hapless citizens from unfortunate pond incidents.

Then the actual resuscitation...and there his mind thankfully struggled to produce any untoward images that he might have to kill himself for. He just couldn't picture it, Byakuya's fingers gently angling his head, cradling him in unconscious repose to be able to lean down and seal his lips over Gin's-

He supposed Harakiri was out, since they probably wouldn't let him get his hands on anything sharp. Suffocation was a tempting alternative, but unfortunately his body had decided that it had been deprived of breath enough for one day, and kept convincing him to come back up for air. Sufficed to say he didn't get much in the way of sleep, and he met the first lightening hints of dawn with something like bleary relief. Any menial chore Byakuya wanted to hit him with had to be better than being left alone with his thoughts. 

He was struck by a conundrum, however. Byakuya had insinuated that he shouldn't leave his room. Did that overrule the standing precedent to report for his duties? He was trying to figure out which course of action he was willing to risk when Byakuya kindly solved the difficulty for him by arriving in a menacing whirl of expensive silks, with a temper set to match it. He gave Gin a hard, thorough glare and snapped, “Get dressed.”

Not in the best of moods this morning, Gin noted with a faint sense of satisfaction. Things with the family obviously hadn't gone well. He just hoped it had ended equally badly for the sharp-eyed auntie and the sneering cousin. He retreated into the wardrobe to find a clean uniform, but Byakuya was suddenly hovering insistently at his elbow and swatted Gin's hands away from the plain white kosode.

“Not that one. Here.”

He briskly pulled a different garment from the selection in the wardrobe and shoved it into Gin's arms. This robe was blue, and while it wasn't embroidered or embellished in any fashion, it _felt_ more expensive. The cloth was finer, the cut more formal.

“What's the occasion?” he asked, eyeing it dubiously. There was little point in having him dress more nicely if he was supposed to be keeping out of sight.

“We'll be attending a Council Meeting later to discuss yesterday's incident,” Byakuya informed him. “I expect you to be well behaved and conduct yourself appropriately throughout the proceedings. Do you understand?”

The garment fell numbly from Gin's hands to the floor, heedless of the creases such treatment would likely result in. “But you said-?”

“I never said you would not _also_ have to relate the events to the council,” Byakuya interrupted his protest smoothly. “You are required to be present for the accusation, or else it can hold no weight.”

So he'd lied...though not really. In other circumstances, Gin might have had some respect for such underhanded sneakiness from Byakuya, but at that moment the world was swimming in front of him in a rather alarming fashion. The closet walls were pressing in close on all sides, suffocating him, trapping him, and the crawling memory of unwanted contact was oozing from his pores – the disgust that no amount of scrubbing would wash away. 

Byakuya was blocking his only exit, and even though he looked as primly composed as ever, Gin could tell the man was braced, expecting Gin's resistance.

Well he'd get it. Gin _would not_ be herded like a lamb to slaughter back before the Council. He wouldn't subject himself to another humiliating interrogation, another violating examination. He glared back defiantly, forcing himself to look Byakuya right in the eyes even though it was almost physically painful to do so.

“ _No_.”

The venom in his own voice was nearly surprising, but Byakuya didn't give an inch. He already had a hand resting on Senbonzakura's hilt, and Gin could hear the infinitesimal sound of it being loosened from its sheathe. “You have no place to refuse.”

“You can't make me,” Gin hissed, and even to himself he sounded desperate, almost crazed. Pain he could take. If Byakuya cut him to bloody pieces, he'd hardly be fit to be dragged before the Council, and even if refusal was paramount to death, Gin had drawn his final line. The idea was almost freeing. With a guttural snarl, he lunged for the Noble's throat, no plan or intention in his mind except for the desire to cause _some_ damage before he was sliced apart.

But at the last moment, Byakuya released his sword. Perhaps he had some aversion to getting blood on the carpet, and it proved to be unnecessary anyway because there was no power or skill behind Gin's leap. It was purely mindless, exactly the same kind of reaction he'd provoked himself in numerous opponents over the years, cracking their composure with a few well-aimed comments. He should have known better, but he couldn't think. He was just so sick of this place, of Byakuya, of the whole wretched situation, of himself.

And he'd forgotten about the collar, but in the next instant was excruciatingly reminded of its presence as Byakuya merely lofted the pressure of his reiatsu at the correct pitch to activate its deadly mechanism. It tightened abruptly, just as Gin's reaching hands might have brushed Byakuya's robes, and his attention became suddenly intimately focused on his own suffocation so that Byakuya had absolutely no trouble putting him down, one arm twisting up between his shoulder-blades, a knee digging punishingly into his spine.

So much for that, Gin thought dazedly, feeling the wires in the collar digging in viciously to the vulnerable softness of his neck. He hadn't managed to put so much of a scratch on Byakuya, but at least he wouldn't have to face the Council. Death by asphyxiation seemed the kinder alternative.

Except that for the second time in as many days, Byakuya seemed disinclined to let Gin slip off into whatever it was that came after the afterlife, because before the room could fade into comfortable blackness, the press of reiatsu eased and the collar loosened again. Gin's traitorous lungs heaved a mouthful of fresh air even if he might have wanted them not to.

“Honestly,” Byakuya said, sounding thoroughly put-upon. “I expected some reluctance, but not that you'd choose to throw your life away over such an insignificant matter.”

Gin was pretty sure Byakuya had every right to kill him now. The contract was null and void...but for some reason he was still breathing, a fact that became ever painfully more obvious as oxygen began to circle in his bloodstream again, awakening every objection of his overly abused body. It hadn't liked that brief pressure of Captain-level reiatsu, not at all. His insides felt like they'd been blended to a pulpy mush and the angle of his captured arm suggested a small nudge in the wrong direction would break it.

He couldn't move. Couldn't have fought if he'd wanted to, and so he was forced to listen as Byakuya continued to speak. “Since it appears in this instance you're incapable of acting rationally and accepting the necessities of the situation, it leaves me little choice but to attempt to reason with you where normally I would not care to spare the effort.

“You will be taken before the council. Immobile and in chains, if you insist on it, which will afford you nothing except the bereavement of your credibility as well as tarnish my own reputation for maintaining your innocence when you appear to be anything but. In short, the result will be my disgrace and your own execution. Not an ideal outcome for either of us.”

Gin panted harshly against the floorboards, wishing he could blot those words out of his mind. He wanted to believe there was some other option, but Byakuya was obviously not going to kill him if it meant being the one to default on the contract, so frankly Gin was screwed.

“The alternative,” Byakuya said with emphasis, the words engraving themselves on Gin's ears, “is that you come before the Council willingly, and allow yourself to be absolved of any accusations. You have my word that no harm will come to you if you comply, and I will overlook your refusal this once.”

Byakuya's word was an empty, worthless thing. He'd proven that already. He had no real motivation to protect Gin from anything the Council might try, especially not now that Gin had defied him outright, even if it had ended unsuccessfully.

And yet Gin still desperately wanted to believe him. If he had to go before the Council, and it seemed like he did, he wanted to believe it wouldn't turn out like last time. That there would be no touching, no shame.

He was a little confused when Byakya's weight lifted off his back, his arm released. Glancing up, he could see the noble brushing himself off, banishing invisible dust from his sleeves.

“I will return to collect you when the time comes. Get dressed, and don't attempt to leave this room until I return.”

He didn't need to imply how _that_ would end. Gin did his best not to shiver at the chilly command and Byakuya left him without so much as a backwards glance, still crumpled on the floor.

* * *

Gin had gone very, very still. For some reason, this seemed to concern Hanatarou more than when Gin had been practically climbing the walls in desperation, and he kept worriedly asking whether Gin was alright, receiving vaguely agreeable nods in response. A little while after Byakuya had stormed out, Hanatarou had arrived apparently under orders to tend to Gin's neck. The wires must have cut into him a little, because there'd been some blood seeping from the edges of the collar which had now been expertly cleaned away.

Gin hadn't appreciated the gesture, and he'd taken his frustrations out on the timid little medic as much as he'd dared to, considering he was Rukia's betrothed. It hadn't been quite as therapeutic as he'd hoped, especially since Hanatarou refused to be scared away. Instead he'd nervously offered Gin some tea, promising that it would help calm him down. Considering no one had apparently remembered that he hadn't eaten, Gin had accepted, choking down the bitter liquid, burning his tongue without care.

But now he was feeling much more calm. Extremely calm. Unnaturally calm, but even that muted realisation didn't break through his peaceful serenity. He'd been feeling so unexpectedly docile he'd even allowed Hanatarou to convince him to don the robe Byakuya had chosen for him because he couldn't quite remember what reason he'd had for objecting to it. It felt light and smooth on his skin. Sun streamed in through his small window, leaving the room bright and warm, entirely comfortable. He couldn't imagine why Byakuya had thought he might want to leave it. It was really kind of nice here.

He remembered at one point that the thought of Byakuya's return had filled him with dread. It seemed odd now, because when it actually happened Gin was sure he didn't feel anything at all, although Hanatarou jumped to attention, fidgeting nervously and said something Gin didn't quite comprehend about having too much tea.

Rukia was there too, waving a hand in front of Gin's face. He blinked impassively at the gesture, and she seemed to be amused, asking her fiancé about how possible it would be to keep Gin like this all the time.

Hanatarou spluttered a nosily scandalised response – no, no! Repeated doses would be dangerous! Don't even think it! - that Gin didn't even find annoying. Most of his attention was on Byakuya anyway, because he had a dim feeling like there was something he needed to be doing right about now but couldn't work up the effort that would be involved to remember what that was.

“I suppose this will have to suffice,” he said drolly, ignoring the fuss Hanatarou was making. “Stand up, slave.”

Gin did. It seemed an easy enough request to comply with, even though his seat had been quite comfortable. He watched Byakuya's expressions twist into a scowl with uncomprehending wonder. 

“Eyes down,” he reminded Gin, and Gin obediently turned his gaze to the floor, but he couldn't seem to find a stationary spot to keep his focus on. His eyes kept drifting, but at least he remembered not to look into anyone's face. It took an unusual amount of concentration to keep that single thought in his head.

“Come along then.”

Gin followed meekly behind Rukia. Hanatarou apparently was not invited, which Gin supposed was okay since at one point he was sure he hadn't liked the shorter man very much even though he couldn't remember why that was. Right at the moment, nothing seemed to be able to touch him, which was an extremely pleasant feeling. It was just a shame there wasn't any of that tea left, because he was starting to feel kind of thirsty again.

Aside from that one small discomfort, nothing intruded on his tranquil state right up until they began their approach to a large door that evoked the brief impression of something less pleasing. Gin stopped, frowning, trying to figure out what it was. Not a nice feeling, he thought, and the idea was kind of foreign at the moment. He'd really rather not have thought about it at all, except-

“Gin?”

Byakuya and Rukia had stopped also, looking at him, and Gin forgot he wasn't supposed to be staring into people's faces. Rukia looked uneasy, Byakuya looked impatient. He came back to where Gin had stalled, ineffectually trying to compel some greater comprehension from the silver-haired man. “Don't attempt to speak or act in any manner unless I direct you too. Understand?”

Gin nodded, although he wasn't quite sure he did. He also had a feeling there was something he didn't like going on, but it was drowned out by the overwhelming numbness.

“And keep your eyes down.”

It was really asking too much for Gin to try and remember all that at the moment, but he'd do his very best. This time he followed them to the door without any further hesitance. It was flanked on both sides by two male attendants, one of whom made to approach Gin before Byakuya's imposing look warded him off.

“That won't be necessary.”

The man looked like he wanted to argue, but bowed in silence and stepped back to his place. With what must have been well-practised synchrony, they pushed open the door leading into the large, imposing Hall that Gin had tried so very valiantly to forget. The small part of him that was still coherent promptly took refuge in the blanket of drugged apathy and refused to come out.

Byakuya took the same position he had the first time, in the centre of the family circle, not at all intimidated by the withering stares of his relatives. Rukia stood at his side, making a very good show of seeming equally unconcerned, but Gin had personal experience in tormenting her and in one brief moment of lucidity he thought he could smell the fear on her. He understood his own place was at Byakuya's other side, kneeling instead of standing. At least he wasn't tied down this time. He could see the hooks in the floor where the chains had been.

It was a good thing he was feeling so damned calm, because even in his stupor he was starting to feel a bit queasy with memories.

“Grandfather.” Byakuya gave the smallest inclination of his head towards the man at the forefront of the room, who seemed to serve as the primary representative of the council even though he no longer served as the family head.

“Byakuya,” Ginrei intoned gravely, and the heavy atmosphere of the room was so intense that even other members of the council seemed to be shifting in discomfort. Gin endured it placidly. “Not even a week has passed, and already the burden which you have brought into the household has caused a matter of serious concern.”

“As I have explained, the fault of the incident lies entirely with my cousin.” There was a subtle shift as the attention of the room turned towards a figure standing at the side of the room. Gin didn't have any trouble recognising the young man who'd tried to drown him, even though any ill-feelings over the incident seemed to have momentarily been sapped away. “Kuchiki Kazama.”

“I see,” Ginrei said, and Gin felt glad that intimidating disapproval wasn't directed at _him_ this time. “And what have you to say about these accusations, Kazama?”

“Grandfather,” Kazama said, respectfulness almost edged out of his voice by outrage and bitterness. “Byakuya's slave had made threats against our House-”

“Really?” Byakuya asked. “Perhaps you'd care to elaborate on the nature of those threats?”

“Can the slave not speak for himself?” asked a different voice, haughty and feminine, from one of the council seats.

“His throat was injured in the assault,” Byakuya explained smoothly. “He finds it difficult to talk.”

Gin supposed that he would, and was distantly grateful that apparently all he was required to do was sit quietly and wait. He didn't envy Byakuya for having to participate in the growing ugliness of the family's conflict.

“The injury of a slave is hardly call for concern,” the woman tried again, only to be cut short.

“Then perhaps I am to ignore any trespass against my possessions or against my honour?” Byakuya asked sharply. “Would you advise me to ignore the transgressions of a lower member of the House against the family Head?”

“Of course not,” another family member tried to appease. “Though it is only a minor infraction-”

“Which nearly resulted in the voiding of a contract of slavery, endorsed by the Soutaichou himself.” Byakuya did a miraculous job of sounding angry without actually raising his voice or slurring his impeccable speech. “For an unprovoked attack on a helpless man.”

“On a _traitor_!”

“It would have been no loss-”

“Surely there was some reason...”

“Enough.” Somehow, Ginrei could manage that same sound of fury without raising his voice either. The room went abruptly dead-silent.

“The contract is the first of its kind to be signed in decades. The death of a slave in our care would have been a cause for considerable embarrassment. I determine that Byakuya has not acted wrongly in this matter.”

Byakuya seemed unphased by this announcement, although Rukia's shoulders sagged in relief.

“Leaving only the matter of Kazama and the slave,” Ginrei continued, and Gin could feel almost a palatable chill as the veritable old man's gaze finally turned on him. “What say you, Ichimaru Gin?Did you invoke any kind of threat against any member of the Kuchiki family?”

Gin glanced uncertainly towards Byakuya, remembering that he was supposed to act only under direction. A small gesture prompted him to shake his head to negate the accusation.

Kazama made a sound as if to protest, and was speared by half a dozen warning glances from various family members. He wisely chose to silence himself.

“Then you truly hold no grudge against this family, or against Kuchiki Byakuya, for your current situation? Given that the actions of this clan have saved you from execution.”

“...No?” Gin hazarded, his voice rusty but the profoundness of the question seemed to require a verbal answer. He hoped that was the right one.

“I see.” Ginrei mulled over that, and Gin's fingers clenched uneasily on his knees. The old man seemed slightly suspicious. Gin kept his head down, trying to focus hard so it wasn't quite so obvious the way his attention wandered in the inebriated haze. It was something of a relief when Ginrei turned back to Byakuya. “He seems to have adjusted remarkably well to the transition.”

“Of course,” Byakuya said. “I would not have acquired him if I didn't think he had the capacity to reconcile to his situation and become an asset to the family.”

Gin was suddenly absurdly sure Byakuya was lying his ass off, and found it all very hilarious. His shoulders shook with a repressed bubble of laughter. Rukia kicked him discreetly in the side from behind her brother's back, and he managed to get control of himself once again.

“Then it seems like it would not have been in his interest to make any sort of threats, given that our good will is the only clause keeping him from execution. I am then to believe that Kazama was at fault for instigating the incident.”

Kazama seemed horrified. “But-!”

“Your punishment,” Ginrei continued mercilessly, “will be discussed by the council. Byakuya, you may leave.”

“Thank you, Grandfather.” Byakuya's bow was not one hair deeper than it needed to be, and with a curt gesture he indicated that both Rukia and Gin should follow. Gin was still a little too numb to feel much of anything, but he had a feeling he'd have reason to be quite cheerful later on. After he was done being alternatively intensely relieved and moderately outraged by the rest of it.

Only after they were out of the hall and well away from anyone's hearing did Rukia mutter, “I can't believe that worked.”

“Quite,” Byakuya agreed shortly. He turned, giving Gin a mild once-over. “It seems ridiculous to commend you for such a performance, but I suppose we can only be grateful you've learned to keep quiet.”

Gin just nodded agreeably, even though he had a feeling he probably should have been more offended. Byakuya's lips twitched into something too foreign to be a smile.

“It is a shame this state isn't permanent,” he remarked, mostly to himself, and then turned to Rukia. “Give Yamada-san my thanks for his assistance. He can return to his barracks now.”

“What about Ichimaru?”

“He can stay with me for the moment,” Byakuya replied. “I suspect he'll need to be watched once he starts regaining his senses again.”

Rukia bowed deeply. “Yes, Nii-sama.”

Even now, Gin found himself incredulous that Byakuya would deign to lower himself to such a chore of keeping an eye on Gin. The expression the noble wore suggested he was almost as dubious himself, but with a sigh he turned and gestured for Gin to follow. “Come.”

Gin went, perhaps following a little closer than previously, because he was aware somehow that Byakuya had done him some kind of favour and that he should probably be grateful.


	6. Chapter 6

Gin came back to himself in slow, disjointed stages of coherence that had given him some fairly serious cause for concern over the state of his own faculties before he'd realised the cause of the problem. He remembered one moment of unusual clarity at the height of drugged contentment, sitting quietly in the corner of Byakuya's room, lulled by the gentle scratchings of inked quill on paper as Byakuya worked at his desk, mind blissfully blank. It had been terribly soothing, and if there'd been any way to cut that memory out of his life and take refuge in it permanently, he would have.

What came after wasn't nearly so pleasant. Gin's mind wasn't the most stable place at the best of times. As the drug wore off, and with it, the numbness, he became just aware enough to know something was really not right with himself but was still too incoherent to know what to do about it. That part had been almost frightening, because while he'd hesitated to speculate on the event, he was fairly sure it might feel something like that when his mind snapped entirely. That kind of helplessness was much worse than simply selling his body into slavery; a fact that he found himself ruminating on as his mind kept throwing fragments of razor-sharp memories at him, as if he hadn't tortured himself enough with the chain of events that had brought him here.

He couldn't remember the specifics for the life of him, but he had the vague notion that Byakuya had spoken with him at that stage where his mind had been least clear. It was a little unnerving not to know what had been said, although it had most likely contained some variation of 'shut up' because in his next moment of awareness he found his own hand fastened securely over his mouth and knew that if he removed it he'd only wind up unintentionally spewing some of the ugly secrets he'd long since resolved never to share. Hopefully whatever he'd rambled about hadn't been at all understandable.

And as coherence sharpened, so did a poignant feeling of nausea as his stomach protested this latest turn of events; the absence of things he _should_ have eaten and the presence of things he _shouldn't _have. The lack of food probably hadn't done him any favours in fighting off whatever had been in the tea, and he remembered just enough of the afternoon to feel more than a little mortified at how out of his wits he'd been.__

“I'm gonna kill you.”

He'd only meant to think that, not say it, but the words had slipped through the lax grip of his fingers and the scratch of the quill's nib that he'd almost stopped paying attention to ceased abruptly. Gin hesitantly lifted his head from the tangle of his arms to find Byakuya giving him a thoroughly unimpressed look. Gin wouldn't be impressed either, honestly. He indistinctly remembered having spent most of the last half an hour rolling miserably around on the floor, trying to figure out which position was least painful.

“It might be better if you didn't voice such intentions where they could be overhead,” Byakuya told him. “Unless you'd like another repeat of today's proceedings.”

Gin's head slumped forward again. No, that wouldn't be right at the top of his to-do list. Even if he was allowed to go drugged senseless, which was probably less stressful for everyone involved, the aftermath left him in no hurry to do it all again. With a deep, dramatic sigh, Gin rolled over onto his back, one arm thrown over his eyes, deciding that if he were going to make threats he should at least wait until he could make them sound a bit more convincing.

“What'll happen to your cousin?” he asked, hoping that his addled brain would actually be able to hold onto the answer. He wasn't supposed to speak unless spoken to, and there was a weighty pause as Byakuya most likely directed a warning glare in his direction. Gin wasn't looking, and perhaps the Captain decided Gin was still disoriented enough to be forgiven for the minor transgression of forgetting his place. 

“He'll be made to pay reparations to the Main House,” Byakuya said, and the writing resumed at a stately pace. “And he'll lose his opportunity to take a place on the Council when his turn for succession comes.”

Which was exactly the sort of metaphorical wrist slap Gin had expected, and for once he hated to be proved right. He gave a bitter laugh, turning onto his side, curling around himself. “So that's what attempted murder gets you here. Must be nice to be a Noble.”

“And how many people have _you_ murdered?” Byakuya countered icily. “Who deserved it far less than you?”

“Ah.” A good point, but then at least Gin had possessed the decency to _enjoy_ the killing. Then the people he'd killed got to be useful for _something_ before they died. “No idea.”

“Then think harder on it. I expect a sincere answer.”

Gin couldn't imagine why. He hadn't confessed to everything after his capture, not by a long shot, but there'd been more than enough to be damning which was all his interrogators had needed. It had also been all they could have expected, even if Gin had made an effort to be more co-operative, because he'd already let himself forget every little sin he might have committed.

“I don't know,” _was_ the sincere answer, but it also wasn't one Byakuya liked. He gave Gin a long, judging stare that Gin might have been more perturbed by if he hadn't already been feeling pretty miserable. Compounding scrutiny on top of it didn't add much discomfort.

“I didn't realise your memory was prone to such remiss.”

Byakuya's tone was reproving. Gin just laughed dryly, head pillowed on is folded arms. “No? Unohana didn't let you in on all my little secrets then.”

He'd meant it as nothing more than a caustic rejoinder, because he had no doubt that all the Captains had been made privy to the information in his files, looking for the clues that should have warned of his betrayal...but Byakuya was silent, and when Gin risked a glance at him he found the Noble giving him a glare that didn't quite cover for the lack of understanding.

“Ohh,” Gin said, surprised and amused. “She _didn't_ tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Byakuya asked flatly, his mouth a thin line of impatience.

Just to irritate him, Gin didn't answer immediately. Instead he slowly levered himself up, testing to see if his sense of balance was starting to return, and trying to puzzle through why Unohana wouldn't have shared that little titbit of information. She'd been the very first to catch on to the fact that there was something not quite right about Gin's memory, and that was only because Gin had only just become aware of it himself. He'd dismissed the problem as something harmless for...years, probably. He'd gotten quite good at convincing himself that there was no problem, with himself, with Aizen, with anything, and at that stage it had been very rare that he forgot anything important, but...

She'd caught him out. Over something harmless too. A stray comment about some event at a Captain's meeting and he'd never felt quite so disoriented to realise that he had absolutely no idea what she'd been talking about. It was the first time he'd really had to confront one of those empty, soulless spaces in his own head, and before he'd been able to come up with a convincing lie, she'd seen something on his face and had gently demurred and turned the topic to something else.

But she'd _known_. Unohana was sharp, and she'd seen all manner of Shinigami ailments across the centuries. She hadn't said anything when he was still a Captain. Possibly out of pity, or maybe simply because it hadn't severely impacted on his work and Captain-level Shinigami were difficult to replace, but he'd caught her watching him sometimes and it had made him understandably wary of her. He'd found all manner of reasons to abstain from what should have been his annual check-up, rearranging her schedules, assigning himself away on missions, and he'd been able to avoid confronting the issue for the better part of a decade, but surely she hadn't forgotten it. _Surely_.

He'd been readying a sly, evasive reply, but smugness drained from him as he realised that, no, she wouldn't have forgotten, and it didn't make much sense that she hadn't chosen to mention it either. For purely strategical reasons, she would have had to mention it to the other Captains in case it was something that might have given them an edge against Aizen – Gin being not quite right in the head being something potentially significant.

_If_ she'd known about it, which left him suddenly reeling at the thought that perhaps that conversation had never actually happened.

“Oh,” he breathed, his head pounding in a familiar fashion. “She...but I...?”

This was the reason why he didn't allow himself to look back. Why he let himself forget. How many other memories did it destroy, if that one hadn't been real? How many did it change? All the times he'd thought she was watching him, analysing him...but what if she'd just been responding to his own wariness, not sure of what had evoked it? What had Aizen gained from that little charade? What had Gin given away by mindlessly reacting, the only actor who hadn't realised the play wasn't real? It was a line of falling dominos, the quickest route to insanity, and he thought it might actually take him this time until he felt the distant sting of a too-tight grip on his shoulders and was quite literally shaken out of his trance.

It was the second time Byakuya had saved him from drowning.

“Stop,” the noble commanded him, his voice as sharp as a whip, and even Gin found himself instinctively obeying, his mind going still. A momentary calm, perhaps. Beneath the surface, his subconscious was brutally ripping that memory to shreds, rending it to harmless fragments he'd be able to push out of his mind.

He focused on Byakuya instead, because at least the man was _real_. And was gripping Gin's arms hard enough to leave bruises. His fingers were tingling from the lack of circulation, but Gin couldn't have cared less. His muscles went slack in sheer relief at having an anchor to hold onto (or rather, that was holding onto him), and his head fell forward, knocking against Byakuya's collarbone.

After a few seconds to catch his breath, he realised that this position really was absurdly intimate, and Byakuya had no reason at all to let him maintain it. It was sacrilegious, to be able to feel the beat of the Noble's heart, to be this close, but Gin didn't dare lift his head. Byakuya might very well simply be waiting for an answer. He scrambled for one, even knowing he was probably invoking some fresh, malicious punishment. “It's nothing, forget-”

“Be quiet.”

Gin flinched, even though Byakuya hadn't said it with much vehemence. A stern hand on his nape forced him to look up, and this time he cared less about defying the taboo as he did about letting Byakuya see whatever had just shattered inside him reflecting in his eyes. As usual, he had no choice about it. Byakuya's lips were pursed with consternation. “What does Unohana-taichou know?”

“Nothing!” Gin practically spat. “Nothing at all. She doesn't know. It never even happened, it...doesn't...”

He ran out of anger and breath all in one instance, and it left him utterly drained. He'd almost wish Byakuya was a little more dense, but the Noble's gaze was boring intently into him. It wasn't that much of a stretch to guess. “Aizen?”

Gin's head fell forward in a tired nod, back against Byakuya's chest, but there was nothing remotely pleasing or scandalous about the closeness this time. Gin didn't even care.

“What did he do to you?”

Gin had been asked that question dozens of times during the first days of his imprisonment. Was he threatened? Bribed? What did Aizen promise him to make him betray? Gin hadn't answered any of their attempts at interrogation, already bored of it, and hadn't even thought that question deserved an answer.

But hearing Byakuya ask it now made him laugh. It started as a soundless, shuddering chuckle and devolved into gasping, breathless laughter that sounded distinctly unhinged even to his own ears. The tension in Byakuya's chest suggested even he was startled by it, but the bitter humour dried up all too quickly.

“I don't even remember any more,” Gin said, sounding exhausted beyond all endurance. He pulled out of Byakuya's hold, not even surprised when the Noble released him, and went to curl back up in the corner to sleep.

Perhaps Byakuya took pity on him, because he left Gin alone all night, leaving him to the uninterrupted procession of broken, haunted dreams.

* * *

When he awoke again, it wasn't all that much past dawn. The window shades were still drawn, hiding the glimpse of light beyond the curtains, but Byakuya himself wasn't present even though Gin was still bewilderingly curled up in the corner of his room. The bed didn't look at all disturbed either, and Gin was starting to wonder if maybe Byakuya really just didn't sleep at all, although perhaps in this instance he simply hadn't found it comfortable to do so with Gin around.

A wise precaution, although Gin had honestly been too dead to the world to try anything even if he'd thought he might succeed. Despite that, Gin was surprised not to have been shunted back to his own room. Surely there hadn't been any thoughts of kindness involved in letting Gin stay.

Any ideas Gin might have entertained about _that_ were put quickly to rest by the familiar looming stack of invitations that had been left pointedly in his proximity. There was a single sheaf of paper beside it emblazoned with Byakuya's now familiar handwriting.

_Finish these_.

Gin let loose a deep, meaningful sigh that thankfully went unheard by anyone other than himself. These stupid invitations were fast becoming the bane of his existence. He could only imagine the chore was intended to keep him safely occupied and out of the way whilst the scathing insult of his existence had a chance to heal in the minds of the Kuchiki family. He doubted any of them felt any more endeared towards him despite his purported innocence.

The sudden, startlingly clear memory of being back on his knees in the Council Room made him abruptly nauseous. He reached for the invitations purely as a recourse to blank his mind with the tediousness of the chore. Byakuya's room had a desk, but he didn't assume he was allowed to make use of it. Instead he set the papers across his knees the same way he had in the garden, taking up the pen and ink that had been left for him, and working on the list anew. He didn't even know how many of them had been lost to the koi pond, and undoubtedly Rukia would chastise him if he missed any. Better to start again. The longer he spent on this, the longer he could avoid whatever humiliating chore might come after it. He had sudden horrible thoughts about being required to pick out decorations or dresses or flowers or something else he would be horribly unsuited for. Even _Byakuya_ would probably be a better choice of assistant for things like that.

Ink blotted on the page as Gin scowled at himself for letting Byakuya sneak into his thoughts. The last thing he needed was reminders of anything relating to yesterday. Perhaps it hadn't been as outright humiliating has his first experience in front of the Kuchiki Council, but it was painfully damaging in its own way. He couldn't bring himself to take any sort of refuge in the memory of a bruising hold on his arm...or the gentle smell of sakura blossoms that seemed inexorably entwined with Byakuya's natural scent.

Gin regarded the pen in his hand, and wondered if he could stab it far enough into his eye to reach his brain. Imagining the resulting expression on Byakuya's face at finding the mess of his corpse later made him smirk and sneer at himself simultaneously, but he wasn't quite that eager to die.

He blamed the three months in the Tower of Penitence for the absurdity of his thoughts. Maybe he should have begged Rangiku for a pity fuck. Even before that, in Hueco Mundo, when all the company he'd had was Hollows, there hadn't exactly been opportunity for anything of that sort. He whimsically tried to recall the last time he'd had anyone in his bed, coerced or not, and disturbingly couldn't come up with a tangible answer.

Of all the things to forget...

Having a nice, safe, memorable (female) fantasy would be a much wiser refuge than the inappropriate thoughts that kept surfacing about the 6th Division's Captain. His own preferences were working against him; the part of him that revelled in risks and unadulterated indecency. The more he tried to drive the thoughts out, the more determinedly they came back to haunt him.

Purely to spite himself, he brought back an echo of the horrible memory of the Kuchiki Clan's doctor, that unbearable, invasive examination, and any temptation of pleasure was immediately banished by wracking shudders of revulsion.

No, that sort of touching was the last thing he wanted, and in any case, Byakuya would never stoop to consorting with the likes of _him_. The thought was entirely ludicrous.

Mouth thinning in resolution, he reached for the next blank paper and mindlessly scrawled out the formulaic invitation. Perhaps it hadn't entirely been her intention when she'd assigned him this chore, but calligraphy had been one of Aizen's more harmless past-times and he'd imparted the basics of the art onto Gin. Only because his own near illegible scrawl hadn't been deemed good enough, and Aizen's sharp eyes had dared him to do better. Gin hadn't expended much effort on doing more than the bare minimum for Rukia's task, but sheer boredom induced a little more creativity on his next attempt. The end result was almost pretty, and he cast it to one side with a derisive snort. Better than she deserved, really.

On the next one, he changed the angle of his strokes and managed a passable imitation of Byakuya's own hand-writing from his memory of the words written in the little black book of his new Master's directives. He scrutinised his own effort, briefly pondered the possible applications of employing such a skill, and promptly tore the paper up. Yes, Aizen had taught him all manner of things, but nothing that particularly enhanced his desirability as a slave. Not unless Byakuya had some unexpectedly sordid hobbies.

For the first time, he left himself consider what little future he had ahead of him. He had three months, he recalled, to make a positive impression on Byakuya, assuming he wanted to be kept. Considering the alternatives were to be executed or sold, the former much more likely than the latter, he supposed it was the best he could hope for. It had only taken him mere days, however, to prove himself weak, uncouth, unreliable, troublesome and – given yesterday's unfortunate revelations – mentally unsound.

Perhaps he should just reconcile himself to the idea of his own demise.

Except that it was just too painful to resign himself entirely to the undeniable reality of his own uselessness. No, he might not have a single redeeming trait, but Byakuya seemed devoted to the ridiculous notion that Gin should have his opportunity to prove or disprove it. Byakuya's opinion shouldn't matter to him in the slightest, but perhaps if he could garner just one instance of recognition from the man it might sooth the bloody absence where the last of Gin's pride had been unpleasantly ripped out. With that in mind, he gritted his teeth and concentrated more diligently on his task. Each stroke of the pen was even, elegant, and perfect.

* * *

It was much later in the day when Byakuya finally made his appearance, although Gin couldn't honestly say he'd noticed the hours passing. He'd gotten used to quiet and solitude, and he found it far preferable to having Byakuya's heavy, judgemental gaze on him again. His shoulders hunched, tensing in spite of all attempts not to be intimidated, but after a brief internal conflict as so whether to feign indifference or not, he decided he was in no frame of mind to be crossing Byakuya's temper. He bowed as he'd been instructed, hoping vainly that perhaps he would just be dismissed and could retire quietly for the evening. It was such a pitiful thing to wish for, but Gin had wisely decided to keep his standards as low as possible to hopefully avoid any further agonising disappointments. 

“Are you finished with the task I set you?”

“Yes, Kuchiki-sama.” Muttering the words into the floorboards hopefully blunted some of the sullenness of the tone. The invitations had all been neatly stacked on the edge of the desk, the pens and ink cleared away. Gin almost felt a little abashed at his own compliance, but he didn't want to give Byakuya any reason to dwell on him. He had no desire to continue their aborted conversation of the night before.

Though apparently his luck was as pitiful as ever. Byakuya didn't seem to be done with him.

“I desire a bath. You will be shown how to prepare the water. I hope I don't have to remind you to behave appropriately to your place.”

The reminder was an unnecessary one, but Gin found himself swallowing dryly at the threat. A gesture brought forth the servant that had been waiting at the doorway. Gin resisted the impulse to look up, instead managing only a silent nod as he followed the man to what he had discovered earlier to be quite an extravagant bathroom. Much nicer than even those offered to Captains of the Gotei 13. No wonder Byakuya preferred to reside at his family's mansion rather than the Division barracks. 

The servant instructed him in short, terse sentences – not polite by any stretch, but not as abrasive as Gin might have predicted. Byakuya had obviously emphasised Gin's lowly status, and he'd almost have expected even servants to lord that over him. Everyone else had certainly been taking gleeful advantage of it. Gin forced himself to be courteous just in case this was some kind of test, even though the sight of the bath water filled him with an unexpected tension that he readily attributed to his recent near-drowning experience. It helped somewhat when the combination of salts and oils added to the water made it foam up luxuriously, filling the air with a sweetly familiar scent.

At least that somewhat answered the question as to why Byakuya smelled the way he did.

The servant departed, leaving Gin to man the taps until the bath was appropriately full. The convenience of modern plumbing in the otherwise archaic mansion almost amused Gin, except for the sour note of annoyance. Really, the task was so easy, he couldn't imagine why Byakuya didn't simply do it himself. How excessive, to get servants to take care of something so trivial.

Though the moment he felt Byakuya's shadow in the doorway, he wisely banished all traces of irritation from his expression. It wasn't as though he had any right to judge.

“Is it ready?”

Byakuya sounded impatient. Maybe he'd had a bad day. Gin judged the height of the water to be close enough to ideal and closed off the flow. “Yes.”

“Very well.” Byakuya resolutely closed the door behind him, and the combination of wet, stifling air and the lack of viable escape routes made Gin suddenly uneasy. It didn't help that Byakuya swiftly crossed the distance between them with elegant, purposeful strides. “Undress me.”

Gin was so taken aback he stared thoughtlessly at Byakuya's face, trying to determine if he was serious. “What?”

It earned him a backhanded slap, although by now that was more insult than injury. He blinked, rubbing his cheek, and trying to figure out if it was only the ringing in his ears that made it sound like Byakuya saying, “You heard. Undress me.”

It wasn't at all safe to look towards Byakuya's face, so he was left to gawk rather inelegantly in the direction of the bath water. He supposed it wasn't that much of a stretch to assume that if Byakuya couldn't even be bothered to run his own bath, he could afford the lax extravagance of having someone else remove his clothing, but... “Seriously?”

“Don't test my patience,” Byakuya warned him, and as reluctant as Gin was, the sting on his cheek reminded him that it could be so much worse. He hesitated long enough that Byakuya hissed a low warning at him before Gin forced himself to reach out and touch him.

He unwound the scarf at Byakuya's neck first; a task made both easier and more difficult by not being able to look him in the face. What little he could see of Byakuya's expression betrayed only neutral indifference. 

“Fold everything neatly.”

Gin did the best he could, setting the silken cloth on the counter before baulking again at the next step. The request was just so bizarre, he couldn't think of where he should even start. A part of him wasn't entirely comfortable putting his hands all over Byakuya's person either. For one, it did nothing to silence those jeering thoughts he'd been entertaining earlier. For another, he was rightfully concerned about crossing some unspoken line and having his head cut off.

But he didn't dare waver too long or else he'd be risking the wrath promised in Byakuya's icy tone. He carefully eased the haori off Byakuya's shoulders, somewhat relieved that the man didn't remain an unmoving statue. He shrugged the garment off into Gin's hands, and Gin mechanically folded it up in the manner he'd learned during his own Captaincy. He tried to let that familiarity lend him a little more confidence even as he tentatively reached for the ties at Byakuya's waist.

He couldn't quite believe he was doing this.

He really couldn't believe Byakuya was letting him. _Telling_ him to, even. Maybe writing out those invitations had made his sanity snap after all. Maybe he was still lost somewhere in the haze of drugged stupor. He certainly felt distinctly dull-witted as Byakuya's sash unravelled, leaving his hakama held up only by the thin, fragile ties at the hips. Gin ignored those for the moment, instead pulling the kosode free and slipping it from Byakuya's shoulders.

And very _nice_ shoulders they were. Not at all like Gin's, which were hard-edged and bony. Byakuya had fine, lean muscles over the elegant architecture of his bones; smooth delineated collarbones and creamy, unmarked skin. Looking at his chest didn't feel any safer than lifting his eyes to Byakuya's face, and yet he didn't have any incentive to shift his gaze elsewhere.

Except that he couldn't afford any time for staring. Not unless he wanted more than a gentle tap for his lapse. He made himself to loosen the ties at Byakuya's hips, letting the Hakama fall with a gentle whoosh of fabric to the tiled floor, and then forced himself not to look at anything else as Byakuya stepped out of the fabric, leaving him to fold it with unnessesarily intense meticulousness. 

“I'm surprised,” Byakuya remarked, and Gin braced himself even though the noble's voice was soft instead of harsh. “All those years of shameless behaviour. I wouldn't have thought you be so easily perturbed.”

It _was_ kind of ridiculous. Gin had never been easy to fluster, but it was a testament to how thoroughly off-balance this whole unbelievable situation had left him. He placed the folded hakama atop the pile of clothing, not willing to turn around. It was bad enough to feel his face heated from more than just the blow Byakuya had dealt him. “M'not feeling quite like myself just now.”

“Clearly.” There was a rustle of fabric. The only thing Byakuya was still wearing was his fundoshi, and Gin's mind had pointedly blanked on how he was going to remove _that_. Evidently he didn't have to. Byakuya must have done so himself, because in the next moment he could hear the water splashing against the sides of the tub as the noble descended into it.

Nope, Gin was definitely not turning around. 

Or so he'd thought, but almost as if Byakuya was honing in on all the things Gin didn't want he blithely ordered, “Come here.”

He spent a wild moment wondering what might happen if he objected. Whether Byakuya would climb out of the bath, wet and naked, purely for the purposes of assaulting him, but perhaps he knew at this stage Gin was too beaten-down to refuse. Following the Noble's lofty gesture, Gin grudgingly knelt down by the edge of the tub. At least the bubbles made the water mostly opaque, sparing Gin further awkwardness, and denying his imagination any further illicit material to craft inappropriate fantasies from. 

Though it didn't help that Byakuya was staring at him so intently. Gin did his best to wipe every trace of expression off his face, and only after a minute did he realise why it felt so strange. He wasn't smiling. Certainly, he hadn't been given much reason to do so lately, but previously it had been his first and most effective defense. 

The first meeting with the Council had effectively ripped that from him, though. Maybe Byakuya was simply sating his curiosity about what Gin's face looked like when it wasn't pulled into a twisted leer. 

“I spoke with Unohana-taichou today.”

In the humid air of the bathroom, Gin felt a cold chill. It was suddenly much more likely that Byakuya wanted the opportunity to watch Gin's face for careless revelations, and he did his best not to give any. 

“She told me you'd been avoiding her ministrations for some years leading up to Aizen's defection.”

Gin wasn't sure if he was supposed to make any sort of an answer to that, so he didn't. He was still cursing himself for ever speaking her name in the first place.

“Having evaluated your most recent physical examination, she believes that this was a deception to hide the discrepancies between the injuries you received on official shinigami missions and those you may have received in Aizen's employ, given that you appear to have many more scars than your record would seem to account for.”

Gin did his very best not to react to that. It was a reasonable assumption. A much safer one than the actual truth, but before he could allow himself the hope that maybe Byakuya agreed the noble swiftly dismissed the notion.

“I'm disinclined to agree. Had the goal been simply misinformation, Aizen had all the nessesary tools to craft you a much more believable alibi. Both you and he possess much more subtlety than simple avoidance, which might only have drawn unwanted attention had your circumstances been different. Therefore I believe there was some other reason.”

There was a dry lump forming in Gin's throat. He was almost tempted to bite his tongue bloody again just to give himself something to swallow. The rest of the Kuchiki family might have stripped him down, taunting all his physical deficiencies, but the inside of Gin's head was a much uglier, more twisted place. He didn't want anyone peering into that darkness, least of all Byakuya.

“Your own admissions suggest you expected Unohana-taichou to posses some knowledge which she did not, and it would seem likely that Aizen had somehow used his illusions to convince you of this assumption.”

Gin did feel a crooked smirk come to him now, distorting the curve of his lips. “Do you think you're going to shock me by suggesting Aizen was manipulating me? Really?” Acidic laughter bubbled in this throat. “I knew what he was.”

“Perhaps you thought you did,” Byakuya agreed more readily than Gin would have expected. “Even though it must have been impossible to tell what around you was real and what wasn't.”

Byakuya had him there. “What's your point?”

It felt like Byakuya's eyes were piercing through him. “It brings to light some question of your complicity in Aizen's plans.”

Gin opened his mouth to splutter an objection, only to feel Byakuya's hand rest ominously on the crown of his head. He shut his mouth, wondering what sort of pain he should brace for next, but Byakuya continued calmly, “I'm not suggesting that you're entirely innocent. I'm well aware of the extent of your crimes. Likely, you would have deserved execution even if the matter of Aizen's coercion could be disproved. All it changes is the possibility of your continued service to this House.”

The hand withdrew from his hair, and Gin belatedly remembered to keep breathing. He would have loved dearly to know what Byakuya's face looked like at that moment. As it was, all he had to read was a slight wistfulness in his tone as he remarked, “Had I thought you were as fully beyond redemption as you seem to believe yourself to be, I wouldn't have agreed to take you, let alone keep you, no matter how obedient you'd proved to be. Consider that.”

Gin didn't particularly want to. He didn't like to think of himself as a _victim_. He certainly didn't deserve anyone's sympathy, if that was what Byakuya was trying to suggest, but he didn't want to try and argue about it. He wasn't supposed to disagree with Byakuya anyway, or so the little rule book said.

“In the meantime...” Byakuya shifted in the water, causing it to slosh against the edge of the tub. “You insinuated that you're experiencing some sort of problem with your memory, correct?”

He wasn't sure if a lie or the truth would work better for him now, but he didn't quite dare try for the former. He managed a stiff, unwilling nod.

“Is it likely to impede your ability to perform your current duties?”

Good question. Gin had functioned relatively well as a Captain of the Gotei 13 even after his mind had started to disintegrate, but perhaps that said something about the quality of the institution rather than his own competence. He shrugged. “Probably not.”

“I expect you to advise me if that's likely to change,” Byakuya told him curtly, and then quite unexpectedly added, “For now, you're dismissed for the rest of the evening.”

Gin reeled. He'd honestly expected something a bit more painful from that rather disturbing admission. “That's all?”

“For now,” Byakuya demurred. “Unless you'd rather stay to help me dress?”

Gin managed a hasty bow that just barely qualified for politeness, and withdrew from the room before Byakuya could change his mind.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for all the Kudos and reviews so far! :D I'm glad people are enjoying the story.

Gin was starting to think he was doomed never to have another good night's sleep. He sardonically wondered if he should go find someone willing to throttle him unconscious again, because it might have been preferable to being left alone with his own thoughts. The nice, peaceful, near-comatose absence of thought he'd been able to adopt in the Tower of Penitence refused to come to him. Instead he was stuck in a whirling tornado of confused questions and painfully sharp fragments of memories. 

Perhaps it would have been better if his broken mind had become a bit less acute. If Aizen had trained him a little less well, because beyond the glaring embarrassment of their conversation in the bathroom this evening, Gin was unpleasantly aware of the layers of nuance that exchange had held even though he'd much rather have remained ignorant of them. He couldn't help that Aizen had taught him to read further, showing him how to use those games of power to his own advantage.

Nobles played them too. Byakuya had never deigned to play with him before, not when they'd both been Captains and the field had been more or less level. Or perhaps he simply didn't play them outside of his manor, because he was really much better at it than Gin had ever thought he might be.

Byakuya had ordered Gin to undress him.

The way Gin himself had been made to undress before the council, albeit with less witnesses this time, but there was a significance to that act that Gin couldn't pretend he wasn't aware of. A deliberate exposure of vulnerability that Byakuya had intended him to see.

It wasn't exactly an apology. Byakuya owed him nothing of the sort, after all, but the intentional lowering of his guard was still an act of...something Gin didn't dare let himself identify.

Of course, it said other things too. Byakuya had held that conversation with utmost composure, in spite of the lack of dress. It proclaimed rather clearly that he didn't fear Gin, so much he could put himself willingly at a disadvantage. Quite a bold power play that Gin had nonetheless proven him right on. It had been a test, the same way leaving Gin alone and unattended in his room had been a test – and perhaps allowing Gin to sleep there as well. 

But despite that display of dominance, Byakuya also hadn't interrogated him too harshly, and that was even more confusing. He could have ordered Gin to spill the full contents of his knowledge...whether he would have was another question. Maybe he'd thought better of trying to push Gin that far when they'd only just gained some fragile equilibrium of understanding.

More difficult to reconcile; that Byakuya wasn't like Aizen, in that he wouldn't crush Gin's brittle spirit just for the idle curiosity of seeing what might happen. 

Byakuya wasn't exactly _cruel_. Arrogant, callous and uptight, but not deliberately malicious.

Gin wasn't quite sure how to deal with that. At the very least, he couldn't claim his life had been dull since Byakuya had made the dubious choice to take him in. The thought almost made him smirk, although any anticipation of what tomorrow might bring was bound with its own fair share of dread. Given what the last couple of days had brought him, he didn't think it was entirely undeserved. 

Ruminating on the horrors of tomorrow was also a lot more harmless than remembering those brief pulses of heat under his fingertips as he'd divested Byakuya of his clothing. Even now, Gin couldn't entirely scrub the feeling of it away against the woven softness of his sheets. When he closed his eyes, the colour of Byakuya's skin in the soft light of the bathroom might as well have been imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. He couldn't seem to get rid of it.

Or the too-intimate observations. Byakuya's skin really wasn't as perfect as he'd first thought. Even though his eyes had tried to glaze over the details, hours later he'd been able to call up the faint arc of a scar on Byakuya's side, exactly where his own Zanpakuto had pierced the man's skin when he'd rescued Rukia from that same fate. Of all the other possible, dangerous features he might have chosen to linger on, that one felt safer. That one he'd _earned_ , when he'd been at the height of his power, ready to ascend to the throne of the Heavens, leaving Soul Society far behind.

He pulled the blanket up over his eyes, hiding the secretive curve of his lips as he imagined tracing the outline of that wound with the edge of his nail, finding the image an oddly soothing one.

* * *

One advantage, Gin discovered, of having to keep his face to the floor was that he could stifle his yawns against his sleeve without Byakuya being privy to them. The morning had dawned oddly cold, grey and bleary, making Gin sorely regret the lack of sleep. Even Byakuya seemed a little frayed, although Gin couldn't quite attribute that suspicion to anything in particular. The noble was impeccably groomed, not so much as a hair out of place.

He preferred to think he was imagining things rather than admitting he might have started to know the nuances of Byakuya's silences any better.

“Today is the seventh day of our contract. As of tomorrow, I'll be required to return to my duties in the Gotei 13.”

Byakuya sounded oddly disgruntled about it. Maybe he'd been enjoying his impromptu holiday...or maybe he just didn't like the idea of Gin wandering around unattended, unwatched and uncowed.

Gin thought he might just be able to warm to the idea.

“Your training has hardly progressed in any manner, though given your condition upon arrival, that's only to be expected.” Byakura looked him up and down, appraising him with a sour note of disapproval. “From now on, you'll receive your daily instruction from the servants. I expect you to master the tasks they set you quickly, and prove yourself an asset to the House.”

Gin tried not to sigh. That didn't sound fun, but he supposed he couldn't keep sitting around indefinitely in Byakuya's private garden, pretending to be useful. “Yes, Kuchiki-sama.”

And so he began that day with an endless process of introductions to his fellow servants, none of whom seemed to take particularly kindly to him, nor did they seem to hold much hope for his achievements in the basics of – of all things – housework. Cleaning, sweeping, dusting, _cooking_...the last of these he felt particularly underwhelmed by, and he resisted the urge to wonder aloud what might happen if he poisoned the family by accident. 

The thought might actually have some merit. He filed it away for later.

It was exhausting, too, having to hold his chin up and his eyes down in front of so many people who were undoubtably going to make his next few weeks hell. The purgatory of menial labour. And apparently he still had to feed the fish.

“Don't forget,” Byakuya said, his tone promising ominous consequences should any of his precious Koi starve. “You will now report to me in the evenings instead, so I can evaluate your performance and assign any additional tasks I might require of you.”

“Yes, Kuchiki-sama,” Gin repeated for what felt like the umpteenth time that day. It was starting to feel like those were the only words in his vocabulary, and it made his insides itch for some small show of defiance just to let the man know that Gin wasn't going to submit to this quietly. So help him, he'd find some means of making Byakuya regret allowing Gin to be let loose with a feather duster, as soon as he could think of some suitable means of doing it.

* * *

Unfortunately, all acts of retribution were forcibly put on hold by sheer _exhaustion_. Byakuya had haughtily asked the servants to make sure Gin was worked hard, and they had been gleefully upholding that instruction until Gin wasn't entirely convinced they weren't actually trying to kill him. Months of imprisonment, starvation and forced immobility hadn't left him terribly strong, and it was galling to be looked down upon by souls that would have once fallen to their knees at his mere passing.

He went to bed aching every night, his muscles pulling in odd places, his fingers blistered from scalding water and the splintering handles of brooms. It was almost reminiscent of the days he'd spent honing his sword skills, but far less satisfying. There wasn't much pleasure in the never ending mountain of chores that needed doing. Who'd have thought managing a Noble household took so much work?

Not that the Nobles themselves did any of it, and at least a few of them were going out of their way to make his life even more miserable. Apparently any of them had a right to usurp him from his current task to attend to whatever whim they might be able to come up with. Carrying, fetching, being made to search for mysterious lost objects, being scolded when he couldn't find them, having to feign apology when said object mysteriously turned up in its owner's pocket. He'd been pushed, tripped, and taken more 'accidental' blows than he cared to count. He'd also spent one very harrowing afternoon in the personal chambers of another of Byakuya's cousins playing the role of her personal attendant, brushing her hair, running her bath, and turning up the sheets on her enormously luxuriant bed.

He'd been horrified by the thought that she might ask him to join her in it. 

Thankfully, the liberties they were willing to take only went so far. None of them were brave enough to leave him with anything more than bruises for fear Byakuya's might hear about it, and Gin stubbornly stayed silent in spite of the constant barrage of bullying. There were certainly enough witnesses that Byakuya likely knew about it and didn't care enough to intercede. It was the same code of silence that had been rampantly prevalent in his own Division; the rule of the Third was that you deserved what you got unless you were strong enough to put a stop to it. Perhaps this was irony coming back to bite him.

He only saw Byakuya in the evenings now, usually after his final feeding of the fish which had become one of the few bright spots in his days – the koi were much better company than the rest of the household. On the first couple of nights, Byakuya had derisively dismissed him immediately. Gin had been all but swaying on his feet, barely coherent. By the end of the week, however, when Gin had started to adapt to the workload, he'd ordered his slave to run another bath, and it wasn't until the tub was mostly full that Gin found himself looking morosely at his own reflection in the water being bubbled over by the foam. One week and not so much as a squeak of rebellion from him. He was really kind of disappointed at himself.

“You've adapted remarkably well,” Byakuya said, bringing even more painful credence to Gin's own thoughts as he shut the bathroom door behind him. The sudden privacy seemed oddly significant. Gin shook his head, dispelling the cobwebs of mindless endurance that had gotten him through the long, awful days without too much painful reflection.

“You don't need to sound so surprised.” His own voice sounded husky with disuse, and he realised belatedly that even though he'd spent the week surrounded by people he really hadn't spoken that much. All his interactions didn't really require anything more than mute acceptance and the occasional bow. “Aizen-taichou could have told you I'm perfectly capable of following orders when it suits me.”

Byakuya's eyebrow arched elegantly, as if he were surprised Gin would be so crass as to bring up his former Captain, but if he thought Aizen's name was going to make Gin flinch now, he'd be sorely disappointed. He didn't comment on that, however, only mildly repeating, “When it suits you?”

“Of course,” Gin said, managing a passable imitation of his old leer. “You didn't think I was really housetrained, did you?”

If he could pretend his compliance had been purely intentional, all part of his plan, that would be enough to appease his wounded ego. It was difficult to tell if Byakuya believed him; his expressions gave away about as much as a stone would. Gin blithely ignored the silence, reaching for Byakuya's scarf. “Shall I undress you, Kuchiki-sama?”

He was decidedly impressed with his own performance. He even managed to roll the words with a sly purr, and for a moment he though he might actually win one small round against the noble and have him refuse, but Byakuya valiantly stood his ground. At his nod, Gin began unwinding the scarf with none of the hesitance he'd displayed last time.

“I see you're feeling more like yourself now,” Byakuya noted, and his tone was impressively neutral, even while Gin's fingers were working at the ties on his sash. 

“Hope you weren't expecting me to stay shy,” Gin retorted cheerfully. “Asuka-sama's been giving me private lessons.”

Byakuya didn't really have many tells, but the heavy flicker of reiatsu told Gin he'd scored an unintended hit with that comment. He'd have celebrated it more fiercely if Byakuya hadn't grabbed him by the wrist, and he was uncomfortably aware that the casual strength in that grip could have shattered the bone.

“Just what have you been doing for my cousin?”

“Anything she asks me to,” Gin replied with exaggerated innocence, as if he were utterly oblivious to the sudden frost in Byakuya's tone. “Isn't that what you ordered me to do?”

There was something almost thrilling about finally seeing a crack in Byakuya's composure...or maybe it was just the adrenaline from the suffocating weight of reiatsu in the air. It bore down on Gin's shoulders for a moment, making the tattoo on his back prickle uncomfortably before it lifted with unexpected suddenness.

“It was my understanding that you'd informed the Soutaichou that you refused to perform sexual favours for anyone in this household.”

Gin started, slightly taken aback. “I'm surprised he told you.”

“Of course. I was aware that your compliance would only go so far, even given your indentured state. Soi Fong-taichou informed me of your restrictions and I found them to be reasonable.”

Gin blinked rapidly, now somewhat at a loss. “I didn't think I actually had a choice.”

Byakuya gave the impression of rolling his eyes without the actual indignity of doing so. “Then you hereby have my permission to refuse any demands of that persuasion as you see fit.”

“And if I didn't want to refuse...?” Gin asked, more out of curiosity than because he had any real desire for anything of the sort.

“Then that's up to you.” Byakuya gave him a superior stare. “Though I'd be extremely surprised if you had any interest in Asuka's private lessons.”

Gin snorted, amused in spite of himself. “Not really.”

Byakuya was prettier anyway.

Which more or less collapsed any of his insinuations of what he might have done with Byakuya's cousin, but he was honestly a bit relieved to know he could actually refuse something he'd undoubtedly find personally distasteful. Byakuya seemed almost relieved himself, which made Gin wonder who he'd actually been concerned for; his relative or Gin.

Probably the relative, he decided after a minute. It would probably be some horrible disparagement of honour if she'd accidentally gotten pregnant with the child of a household slave.

He experimentally twisted his captured wrist. “You know, I can't finish undressing you if you keep holding on like that.”

The abrupt way Byakuya released him made him think the Captain had forgotten he was doing it in the first place. Gin was careful to keep his head down, hiding his smirk. He hadn't quite won that round as he'd intended, but he certainly hadn't lost so embarrassingly this time either.


	8. Chapter 8

It might not have been entirely wise to threaten misbehaviour in Byakuya's hearing, because from the next day onwards Gin's workload seemed to have increased again. He barely had time to catch his breath between one chore and the next, and he could feel the other servants watching him carefully, looking for any sign of slacking they could criticise. 

Even so, Gin couldn't resist feeling a little smug at the thought that maybe Byakuya was losing sleep over wondering what Gin might be plotting. It helped that his own rest was now too exhausted for dreams or restless thoughts. He was lucky enough to be able to drag himself into bed properly before he collapsed each night. 

The furious pace also meant that the members of the Kuchiki family had less time to bother him, which he was almost grateful for. He'd once or twice caught a glimpse of Asuka pouting at him from afar, and had thankfully had plenty of excuses to make himself scarce before she could try approaching him. 

It would have actually taken some measure of persistence for any of them to track him down, which was why he was understandably wary when a heavy shadow fell across the square of tiles he was supposed to be scrubbing.

“It's Gin, isn't it?”

The voice was unpleasantly familiar. Gin risked a glance upwards and found himself looking at the imposing visage of the sharp-eyed Aunt that had been with the cousin who'd tried to drown Gin in the pond. Her expression was muted now, but he could easily remember her sneer.

Still, he didn't exactly have much of a choice but to be polite with her. He offered a halting bow that was only barely deferential. “Yes...?”

“I have a task for you,” she told him, and though her tone was cool, it wasn't the kind of mocking derisiveness he'd grown used to from other members of the clan. “Please accompany me.”

Gin shot a glance at the servant who'd been directing his task, but she only shrugged helplessly. She didn't have any authority to intercede either, even if she'd been inclined to do so. Gin bit down on the inside of his cheek, but climbed grudgingly to his feet even though his instincts were telling him to try and concoct some sort of plaintive excuse to be elsewhere. Unfortunately he doubted his right to refuse service applied to anything but the most heinously degrading of tasks. 

He followed her warily, and if nothing else he could appreciate the brief rest his shoulders and back were getting. He'd spent the last four hours scrubbing floors that really hadn't been all that dirty to begin with, in his opinion, and the vertebrae of his spine felt like they'd twisted to odd, uncomfortable angles. He tried to ease out the tension as he made brief mental notes on the landmarks of the route they were taking. He'd gotten a lot better at navigating the labyrinth of the mansion, but he'd never had reason to come this way before. It housed the chambers of some of the older, more prestigious members of the clan.

Which made him all the more dubious when she directed him to follow her into what could only have been her private room. He had the sudden, hysterical thought that maybe he was going to spend the afternoon as her personal lap dog, the way he had for Asuka. At least he could probably refuse if she asked him to undress her.

But instead of ordering him to any sort of chore, she gestured at the small table that had obviously been prepared for guests. He tentatively took a seat, folding his long legs beneath him, and staring at the tea tray with trepidation. He hoped she didn't expect him to know how to serve it, because that was one nicety no one had yet seen fit to teach him. It couldn't have surprised him more, however, that she not only poured it herself but offered him one of the cups.

“Uh...” He stared at it as if it were poisoned. He couldn't turn quite the same expression on her without looking at her face, however, so he was forced to keep his gaze on the cup. “Not to be impolite, but I don't understand. Did you need me for something?”

“No. My apologies for the deception.” Her own dark eyes were lowered under the heavy fullness of her lashes. “Although it's not required to make any reparations to a slave, I wished to offer you my condolences for what took place in the garden. Such an event reflects badly on the honour of our house.”

“Really?” Gin wasn't sure he believed her, but she had quite an impressive mastery over her face. He couldn't read anything from her expression but vague regret.

“Yes. Please accept my hospitality.”

She obviously expected him to drink, and he couldn't think of any way to refuse without offending her. Not that he especially cared about her feelings but the sensibilities of Nobles were awfully fragile things, and Gin was supposed to mind his manners. He felt oddly tense, almost as if he could feel unseen eyes staring at him. Maybe this was another test. He wouldn't have put it past Ginrei to make his own evaluation of his grandson's unusual acquisition. Maybe the whole family was in on some conspiracy to make him run a gauntlet of invisible trials. 

He took the smallest of sips. The tea was something florally sweet, not quite suited to his tastes. He refused to grimace. “Thank you.”

She nodded minutely. “My nephew seems to have been keeping you quite busy. Tell me, how are you finding your new position?”

Gin opened his mouth, wondering what sort of bland, obscuring reply would be safe to give her, and couldn't quite account for what happened next. One moment he was staring at her, hands wrapped around his cup, letting the heat of the ceramic warm his fingers...the next moment he was on the floor, her refined face staring down at him.

“Are you all right?”

He jerked away from her, sitting up and trying to gather his bearings in one smooth motion he might have been gratified by if he hadn't been so disoriented. He glanced around the room, but in spite of the sudden itch of paranoia that they weren't alone, he couldn't see anyone else. He stared at the woman suspiciously. “What happened?”

“I think you fainted,” she said, folding her hands into her lap. She didn't seem terribly flustered by it, but then again, the Kuchiki's were a pretty cold blooded bunch. “One moment we were talking, the next you simply fell.”

Gin checked himself over rapidly, but everything seemed to be intact. His thoughts felt a little muddled, but that might just have been from the sudden, glaring absence of any explanation for how the hell he'd just wound up on the ground. “Fainted?”

“Yes.” She ignored the wary doubt in his tone, looking at him intensely. “Do you feel unwell? I didn't realise your state of health was so fragile.”

Gin bristled, but she didn't seem at all affected. In fact, her serene composure made it impossible to tell whether the comment had been one of concern or disparagement. He stared at her, but if she was any more enlightened as to what had just happened than he was, it didn't show.

“Should I arrange for you to be escorted back to your rooms?”

Gin blanched at the suggestion, shaking his head. “No, I'm fine, I-”

Her gaze was decidedly cool. It sent a chill through him abruptly, and almost defensively he offered her a deferential bow. “I can find my own way back. Thank you for the tea.”

He fled the room as quickly as he dared, wondering what the hell had just happened and why he'd felt such a powerful urge to escape when she hadn't so much as touched him.

* * *

Safely back in his own rooms, he was starting to doubt his own sanity. A more thorough inspection of his own person revealed absolutely nothing. No unaccounted-for injuries, no questionable aches that the work he performed couldn't explain, nothing missing or added to his affects.

_Nothing_.

Perhaps the sealing tattoo seemed a little more tender than usual, but given that he'd slipped sideways, he might have fallen on it. He'd almost come to dismiss the constant burn of its presence, so he couldn't really say if the sensitivity was significant or not. 

Maybe he really had just fainted.

Except he couldn't believe it of himself. Not _Ichimaru Gin_. Not a former Captain of the Gotei 13. He wasn't some wilting flower to be knocked over at the slightest provocation. The timing was pretty suspicious too, but then again, he was stumped to figure out what the motivation might have been. It was possible there was something more to it that he hadn't seen yet.

He'd much rather believe that than consider the possibility that something had gone seriously wrong inside his own head. Memory lapses were one thing. Blackouts felt like an uncomfortable progression of something he'd started to believe that, even if it wasn't really healing, it wasn't getting any worse.

He rubbed his temples, trying to remember that tremulous moment before he'd woken up on the floor. Had that memory tapered off? Ended abruptly? Maybe there'd been something in the tea?

No, that didn't seem quite right. She'd taken a sip of her own not long after he had, but there was something...

The tea cups had still been sitting on the table.

He'd been gripping his pretty tightly. If he really had fainted, slipped sideways, surely it would have spilled everywhere. It seemed a petty discrepancy, but it was the only one he could come up with. Aside from that, he was at a complete loss, but at least from now on he knew to give that sharp-eyed Auntie a wide berth.

* * *

“You seem quiet.”

Gin paused in the act of slipping Byakuya's haori from his shoulders. He supposed it was something of an oddity now. Normally he took these moments of relative privacy to mouth-off to Byakuya as much as he dared to.

“I've had a lot on my mind,” he replied primly, with what he hoped was the right note of deviousness to make Byakuya assume he was scheming something. Still, it was difficult to keep the twist of a frown off his face. 

“If you still have so much time to think, you haven't been working hard enough.”

“Ha. I bet you haven't heard anyone complaining about me yet.” It was easier to remove the haori from behind, and rather than move to Byakuya's front, he simply reached around the noble's waist for the ties of his belt. He could practically do this with his eyes closed now. He rested his chin on Byakuya's shoulder, musing that he'd gotten an awful lot more comfortable with this sort of contact since that first, unsettling incident in the garden. “I have a question. About that time you pulled me from the pond...”

He stopped, not having entirely meant to ask, but Byakuya was often a bit more lax with protocol in the evenings. Even _he_ couldn't be entirely uptight all the time, apparently.

“Yes?” Byakuya asked with a hint of impatience, one that suggested Gin had better have a good reason for bringing that up. Gin clicked his tongue, and mentally shrugged. It couldn't hurt to ask.

“Who was the woman that was with your cousin? I never caught her name.”

“Kuchiki Natsume. My father's sister.” 

So she was actually an aunt, and not some great- or once-removed- variation thereof. “What's her relation to Kazama?”

“She's his mother.” Byakuya gave him a sideways look, as if trying to figure out the cause of Gin's sudden curiosity.

“Huh. So I suppose she wouldn't have any reason to like me, then.” That cleared that up, at least.

“Would that bother you?”

“Not really.” Aside from the fact that it gave her a convincing motivation to have done _something_ to him. Now if only he could figure out what that something had been. Byakuya's silence seemed rather inauspicious, however, and Gin decided he'd better allay any suspicions. “She came to speak to me today.”

“Oh?” Byakuya sounded almost as dubious as Gin had felt, albeit in a much more dignified fashion. “What did she want?”

“She invited me for tea.”

It was one of the few occasions he'd ever seen Byakuya at a loss for words. It made him brightly compelled to add, “Is it a Noble thing? Inviting your enemies over for tea?”

Byakuya scoffed. “Only if she wanted something from you.”

Which sounded about right, and was enough to make Gin fall silent again. What _had_ she wanted? Not to apologise, certainly. It couldn't have been anything good, considering that his presence was the reason why her son had lost so much grace in front of the rest of the household. If she really hated him, though, she'd managed to hide it pretty well. Gin decided she must be a pretty scary lady. All the more reason to stay out of her way.

“What _did_ she want?”

The question had come from Byakuya, who was doing a commendable job of looking imposing even though Gin had just about finished removing the rest of his clothing. For a moment, Gin wondered if he should mention the whole unusual episode. Maybe Byakuya would have a better idea of what it all meant, or what Natsume might have done to him.

Or maybe he'd be inclined to think it was just another example of Gin's weakness. Some further lapse of mind or body that would make him unsuitable to keep.

Or he might just assume Gin was making it up to get his relative into trouble. Gin was a fairly prolific liar, after all, and had no reason at all to like the woman.

It wasn't as though he had any proof one way or the other than anything untoward had happened. Under Byakuya's sharp gaze, Gin made an expansive shrug. “Nothing.”

Nothing that he'd been able to figure out, anyway. He'd hold his tongue until he knew better what he was dealing with.

* * *

Too many uneasy thoughts had kept him up all night again. Gin was feeling decidedly sluggish the next day, having to struggle to drag himself from bed and make himself presentable. He was so out of sorts he didn't even notice the bubbling tension in the household until he made it to the kitchen which was a hub of bustling activity. He blinked blearily at the scene, catching the attention of one of the passing servants. “What's going on?”

Two weeks of having been immersed in their instruction, most of the servants had come to regard him with a certain wary indifference, which thankfully allowed him to drop most of the formalities with them. The man gave him a guarded look but answered, “There's a celebration planned. Kuchiki Kazama-sama's been accepted into the Gotei 13.”

What an unsettling coincidence to hear that name again so soon. Gin pursed his lips, finding it more than a little strange, when he suddenly felt a pointed nudge against his hip. “Hey you.”

He found himself looking down the menacing length of Rukia's elbow and sardonically inclined his head. “Forgetting my name already, Rukia-sama? I hear the memory's the first thing to go with old age.”

She scowled at him, looking about as ferocious as a kitten. It was almost kind of cute. “You're with me today. Let's go.”

Bemused, he followed her from the kitchen all the way to the grandiose entrance hall where he'd become quite personally acquainted with every tiled inch of the floor. He was more than a little surprised when she tossed a bundle of fabric at him, which turned out to be a nondescript looking cloak bearing the Kuchiki crest. A gesture at the guards had them pulling open the door for them, and Gin almost fell over.

“We're going out? _Out_ out?”

“Hurry up and put that on,” Rukia ordered sourly. “Make sure you keep your hair covered. I'm not going to be leaping to your defence if someone recognises you out there.”

Gin certainly felt a lot more awake now. He wrapped the cloak around his shoulders, pulling the hood up over his head and letting it shadow his face. He hadn't even dared to imagine he might go outside again... _ever_.

The novelty was so utterly unexpected they got all the way out past the equally impressive front gate and halfway down the street before it occurred to him what the reason was. “Huh. So I'm guessing your brother told you to make me disappear for the day so Kuchiki Kazama doesn't feel like I'm spoiling his big party.”

“Shut up,” Rukia told him, but with a note of exasperation that told him he was right, or close enough to it. Gin really didn't have any call to complain, but it still felt like he was juggling jigsaw pieces without being able to see the whole picture.

“And I'm guessing you're not a fan yourself,” Gin noted, looking over her posture. Reading her had never been especially difficult. It was one of the reasons he'd taken such delight in tormenting her. “Since you don't seem to be protesting all that hard.”

“I'm just following my brother's orders,” she told him flatly, which might as well have been a heart-felt admittance that she didn't want to spend the day trying to endear herself to the viperous members of the Kuchiki clan. Gin really didn't blame her, and he was almost tempted to taunt her for it, except that being outside was a privilege he didn't care to lose any time soon. Even the opulent luxury of the Kuchiki Manor got tiring when you didn't have any choice about it. 

And walking the streets of the Seireitei...it was painfully nostalgic. Gin had spent plenty of hours getting himself purposefully lost out here, driving Izuru to despair with his timely absences that just so happened to coincide with important meetings or practice drills. There were so many places one could slip away to for a sneaky, hidden nap. Rukia was marching purposefully onwards. Gin let his steps drag experimentally, wondering how long it would take her to notice.

Not long at all, really. “Don't even think about it.”

The collar at his throat gave a sudden, vicious squeeze in time with the spiking pulse of her reiatsu. He choked, reaching up instinctively to tug at it, but it was already loosening now that she'd made her warning clear. Gin laughed raspily. “I wasn't thinking anything.”

“Good. It'll choke you the moment you stray too far, so I'd stick close if I were you.”

No heroic dashes to freedom then. Gin smirked wryly, pulling the hood down lower over his eyes. “As you wish, Rukia-sama.”

Somehow, she didn't look entirely pleased at the way he ghosted along cheerfully in her shadow, looming just a little too close for comfort.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for everyone who left reviews! Sorry there's been a bit of a wait on this chapter, but don't worry. I still have lots left to post. :3

While Gin hadn't exactly expected to be allowed to indulge in what had previously been his favourite pastimes in the Seireitei – people watching and napping – he'd almost dared to hope that maybe Rukia would interpret her brother's instructions in a way that escaped the need for him to do any actual work. Aimless wandering, or perhaps finding a nice picturesque garden to relax in.

No such luck. Apparently Rukia had a long list of chores she intended to take care of even while she was stuck babysitting him. In fact, she'd obviously decided to take advantage of the situation and he was left to carry her enormous stack of parcels as she ran her errands. Far too many of them were wedding-related for Gin's liking. It felt like they'd visited every seamstress and florist in the Seireitei; Gin wouldn't have even imagined the need for so many in one city.

Still, it could have been worse. At least he was allowed the occasional moment to himself, since his burden had become too unwieldy to manoeuvre where he might carelessly knock something fragile. He was permitted to wait outside, leaning idly against the building, Rukia's dark warnings reminding him not to tempt fate by escaping. Even the short leash didn't bother him all that much, thought that might have been because his thoughts were otherwise occupied.

Kuchiki Kazama joining the Gotei 13...Something just didn't feel quite right. Gin's memory of the noble was a bit distorted by what had come of that rather unfortunate meeting, but he'd been taught to make quick, thorough observations and he didn't think his first impressions had been far off the mark. Kazama would have been a weak contender for a Soul Reaper. His power hadn't been all that impressive, and his motions hadn't suggested the kind of discipline that was required of the training.

So he probably hadn't attended the academy, but then again, the Noble Houses sometimes fostered their children with some of the knowledge that would put them one step ahead of their peers. Sword training was also often a requisite from an early age, because it was often hard to tell how much potential would bloom later on. Kazama must have somehow bypassed the training period, and perhaps the prestige of his clan would have greased enough palms to make that happen. The only question was _why_.

Gin didn't know that much about Noble politics, but he surmised that it must have been because of Kazama's punishment. Denied a seat of easy power, he must have turned to the only possible alternative; to absolve himself in the eyes of his clan by rising up the ranks as a Shinigami instead. If he proved talented enough, he might be able to win back his honour...or whatever intangible thing it was that Nobles cared about. 

The only problem was...Kazama definitely wasn't that talented. Not enough to guarantee his success, and Gin couldn't imagine a noble willingly subjecting himself to the kind of ridicule that further failure would bring, unless maybe he intended to buy that for himself as well.

His thoughts were interrupted by Rukia storming out of the shop in disgust, kicking the door closed behind her with venom. Gin resignedly picked up the packages again and followed on in the tiny Princess's wake. 

“Maybe you should have dressed like a Noble,” he advised her cheerily. “Then they might actually believe you had enough money to buy their wares.”

“Oh be quiet,” Rukia grumbled, raking a hand through her short, tangled hair. For all her status, she just didn't quite have the proper airs of a Noble. Dressed as a shinigami, most of the upscale store-keepers didn't seem inclined to take her seriously, and she was too proud to drop the name of her clan just to get their attention. He almost approved of her sensibilities...and he certainly approved of the way she was deliberately making things difficult for herself, to his own amusement and her growing consternation. He didn't even have to do anything at all to enjoy watching her frustration.

Despite her much shorter legs, he had to walk pretty briskly to keep up. Fury motivated her pretty well, and it also seemed to loosen her tongue.

“So what seat did Kuchiki-taichou give him?”

“What?” she snapped, uncomprehending.

“Kazama. Surely Kuchiki-taichou wouldn't have made one of his own blood remain unseated.”

“He didn't have to,” Rukia said, her forehead crinkling with a frown. “Kazama-san didn't go into my brother's Division.”

“Hou?” Gin was intrigued. “That's rather unusual, isn't it? I thought all Kuchiki's got sorted into the Sixth.”

“Given the circumstances...” Rukia looked pained, like she couldn't believe she was actually bothering to explain anything to Gin. He decided to make it easier on her in the hope she'd tell him more.

“Bad politics, huh? I suppose there'd be some hard feelings.”

“Kazama-san said he'd rather prove himself in another division, so there was no conflict of interest.” It sounded nice, in theory, but Rukia didn't sound entirely convinced. She didn't believe a noble would choose to be so self-sacrificingly altruistic any more than Gin did.

“So where did he get assigned?”

There was a heavy pause before Rukia finally admitted, “The Fifth.”

Gin's scoffing was audible. “Hah. He really wanted to put Kuchiki-taichou's nose out of joint, didn't he? Although I guess they've got lots of seats to fill.”

A good number of Shinigami had vacated the division, not wanting to be even tangentially associated with the Squad that had once been the seat of Aizen's corruptive influence.

“He hasn't been assigned one yet,” Rukia told him grudgingly. “They're still assessing the level of his skills.”

“Of course,” Gin mused. “Since he bypassed proper procedure and all to get admitted.”

“I heard his mother collected in on some favours.”

“I bet she did.”

They exchanged a look that was equal parts wry disgust and understanding at the things only Nobles could get away with...then Rukia abruptly looked away, perhaps remembering that she was technically one of them.

“I heard his demonstration was impressive, though. Enough that the examiners didn't question his acceptance.”

“You think that's true?”

Rukia shrugged. “He seemed pretty proud of himself.”

Obviously Rukia didn't like Kazama either, which was kind of gratifying. Then again, entering the Fifth when the sting of Aizen's betrayal still hadn't faded was definitely some sort of sly insult directed at her brother. Rukia would have taken it personally. 

Could he have been wrong about Kazama's potential? But then again, if he'd had any serious talent, he would have entered the Gotei 13 long before now. Despite its risks, the Kuchiki Clan took its responsibilities seriously, but that meant Kazama's actions were only setting himself up for disappointment. At a stretch, Gin might be able to believe that the young man was rash enough, desperate enough to try and scrabble for whatever prestige he could get to make up for his shame, but his Mother was another story. She definitely wasn't so careless, and Gin doubted she'd enable her son to a path of further destruction.

No, there was definitely something else going on, although Gin wasn't entirely sure he wanted to find out what it was. Let the Nobles play their little spiteful games against each other; it didn't have anything to do with him.

At least, he hoped not.

Rukia had come to a very sudden stop, and only quick reflexes saved Gin from running straight into her back. He felt his own hackles going up at her stance – tense and battle ready – and cursed himself for not being able to sense what she had. Danger? A Hollow?

But a moment later, his eyes told him what she'd noticed, as up ahead of them there was a small explosion of sound as several bodies tumbled buoyantly out of a small bar that Gin recognised only belatedly. Apparently it was still the favoured spot for Vice Captains to go and celebrate the end of their shifts. It was the right time of day for it too; just turning towards evening, the sky awash with warm tints of pink and orange.

The glints of fading sunlight on Rangiku's hair was an unexpected sucker-punch. Gin lowered his head, making sure the features of his face were well-obscured.

Knowing her habits, Rangiku wouldn't be done drinking for hours yet. She had one arm around Izuru's neck (another sharp pang) and one over Hisagi's shoulders, letting them hold her up even though he doubted she was even a fraction as drunk as she looked. She was laughing, bright and loud and freer than he was ever likely to be now.

He'd wondered if, having done her best for him, that she'd allowed herself to finally forget all about him. He supposed he couldn't blame her. 

Iba followed gamely in their wake, and Renji's red hair was unmistakable. This particular group was well known for fraternising in their after hours, with just one exception.

Hinamori Momo reluctantly allowed Renji to pull her along, looking not at all in the mood for celebration, and Gin found himself remembering all too vividly the crazed look in her eyes as she'd screamed for his death. The rest of the Vice Captains might choose to hold their grudges and pretend they'd bought Yamamoto's grand speech at the Sokyoku, but Hinamori would undoubtedly make an unpleasant scene if she caught sight of him.

He really doubted anyone would choose to prevent her from eviscerating him this time, like she'd wanted to do when confronted with Aizen's false corpse. Rukia had already promised she would do no such thing...except that she had already thoughtlessly shifted to place herself between him and the perceived threat. He could only imagine that she'd forgotten he wasn't actually someone worth protecting.

He knew, almost with the intensity of a premonition, that the moment was going to happen before it did. That Hinamori would turn her head away from Renji's insistent cajoling. That she could catch sight of Rukia, her mouth thinning in recognition. That her gaze would fall on Gin's obscured form, and even though there wasn't anything overt to give him away, she might be able to guess from his height or the thinness of his frame or the pale bones of his fingers which weren't quite hidden by his sleeves.

And she would _know_.

Gin was sure he could see that recognition in her eyes. It was undeniably there, beneath the clouds of melancholy and resentment in her muddied gaze. She could see right through him. She'd know he was powerless, and this might be her only opportunity.

But instead of screaming at him as he'd have expected, he saw her resolutely turn away and follow the procession of the other Vice Captains into the thickening evening crowd.

Beneath his utter disbelief, Gin thought he might almost be insulted.

“Huh. Guess we got lucky.” Rukia's posture relaxed, her muscles unfrozen now as she breathed an almost audible sigh of relief. “She didn't see you.”

No, she definitely had. Gin was sure she'd looked right at him, he just couldn't imagine why she'd walked away. He must have been gaping too obviously, because Rukia smirked at him.

“Or maybe she's just gotten over you, huh?”

“What a relief,” Gin murmured sardonically, fixing his loosened grip on her packages. They'd almost slipped in his lapse of attention. “I already have too many demanding young ladies on my hands.”

“Stop whining,” she sniped at him. “We're going home.”

He was almost as glad for that as she was. Somehow, even without actually threatening him, Hinamori's dark glare had left him feeling even more uneasy.

* * *

Byakuya seemed decidedly wound that evening. Gin could see it in the tight stiffness of his posture, still broadcasting authoritative dominance as though he didn't dare reign it just in case he had to battle through another confrontation with his relatives. Gin didn't quite manage to obscure the sickle curve of his smirk.

“So how was the party?” he asked airily. “Rukia-sama and I had such a lovely day, seeing the sights, breathing all that fresh air...”

Byakuya made a dismissive sound. “It was nothing out of the ordinary.”

Gin was almost disappointed to hear that. He still couldn't quite believe Kazama's promotion was really as straightforward as it seemed to be. “So you're happy for your cousin, then?”

“He conducted himself admirably in front of his examiners. His success reflects well on his upbringing.”

Gin snorted. “Ignoring his murder attempts, I suppose he presents pretty well.”

“There are many people who would have commended him for ending your life,” Byakuya reminded him with perhaps more sharpness than strictly necessary. “In fact, he has plenty of supporters on the Council still who believe his punishment was too harsh for the nature of his crime. Eliminating a traitor such as yourself could be seen as an act to benefit all of Soul Society.”

Gin hardly needed the reminder that he was more or less universally hated. He gritted his teeth and tried not to sneer. “Maybe they'll give him a Captaincy if he manages to off me the next time you're not looking.”

A gust of warning reiatsu made the collar at his throat constrict by a few painful increments. “Mind your tongue. My cousin is still a member of this family and you will address him with respect.”

He almost forgot sometimes, but while Byakuya may not have felt much warmth or affection for the rest of his family, he wasn't exactly on Gin's side either. Gin wavered a little as he fought to catch his breath again, leaning back on the edge of the sink for balance. His fingers clenched against the unyielding stone, and even though he should have tried harder to hold his tongue he'd never been particularly good at practising restraint. 

“I bet they say you've gone soft, protecting someone like me. After that whole debacle with your sister, too. Are they starting to wonder if you're really ruthless enough to be a Captain?”

He imagined Byakuya's eyes as cold, steely slits of grey. “Then perhaps you recommend that I should correct this misconception using your punishment as a means of demonstration?”

There was blood and pain promised in those words. Gin almost shivered. “Why not? That's what I'm here for, isn't it? Someone for you to take out all your pent up frustrations on, since no one cares what happens to me any way. I bet you could put on quite a show. Teach your cousin how it's meant to be done, ne?”

Byakuya pressed him back against the counter, and it was nominally impressive that he could loom so threateningly when Gin was still the taller of the two. “Such a small taste of freedom seems to have made you reckless. Are you truly asking to face punishment?”

He should back down. Force his spine to fold, get down on his knees, attempt an apology...but the heady rush of danger was in his blood now, and he'd allowed himself to be docile for far too long. His fangs had blunted for lack of anything to bite. He lifted his gaze, looking Byakuya right in the eye. They were cold and piercing, as beautifully remote as mist on the mountains. Gin grinned wildly.

“Guess so.”

In spite of the insubordinate challenge, Byakuya's mouth thinned in a line that looked almost satisfied. Maybe he'd been waiting for this too – Gin's true nature to show itself once again. “Very well. Since you insist upon it...”

Senbonzakura was always kept close at hand. Gin's blood sang with anticipation as the blade was drawn from its sheath with a whisper of sound. It's pristine steel wouldn't stay clean for long.

It was worth it, though, to see that hint of interest flickering in Byakuya's normally bland expression. The cool evaluation that saw Gin as something more than just one small, nameless piece in the games of the Kuchiki's callous machinations. At least if he bled, it proved he was _someone_ not just _something_.


	10. Chapter 10

The floor of the cell was cold, jagged stone that was utterly unforgiving under Gin's shoulder blades. He had nothing more than the thin covering of his yukata to protect him, and yet he stretched languidly as if it were a far more comfortable bed, heedless of the shackles on his wrists. The darkness was stifling, the walls oppressive, windowless, and thoroughly claustrophobic.

And yet he smiled at the darkness, as if anyone could see it. No, it wasn't quite as nice as the soft bed he'd first been given, but there was a certain smug satisfaction that he had _earned_ this at the price of the ire in Byakuya's fierce, unyielding gaze. He'd cracked that imposing exterior, wedged his nails under that blank, emotionless mask, and gotten a brief glimpse at what was underneath.

But oh, it had cost him. He'd been locked in this cell...how long? Enough that his stomach was starting to clench anxiously with the loss of meals he couldn't really afford. He didn't think the cuts on his arms were healing, and there was probably going to be a lashing of new scars in all the places Senbonzakura's blade had sliced his skin.

Others might have thought he was insane, and they wouldn't have been entirely wrong in that regard. There'd been almost no rhyme or reason behind his sudden challenge of Byakuya's authority. No event or insult that needed answering, certainly nothing that had been distinctly worse than everything he'd already endured. Hell, he'd only just started to become _comfortable_ with his situation, adapting to the regularity of an existence with enough food, time to rest, and a remarkable lack of pain.

Which had all been part of the problem, really. Gin wasn't used to ease. He couldn't thrive without conflict or challenge. He couldn't abide order, consistence or, dull, dreary, unbearable peace. Little wonder his time in the Tower of Penitence had stricken what little remained of his wits. The monotony had very nearly threatened to kill him.

Gin was a creature built for destruction. Going too long without being able to turn his edge against something left him feeling unsatisfied, incomplete. Others might have been aghast at his behaviour, to think satiating himself was worth the weight of Byakuya's punishment which was quite heavy indeed. He'd been stripped of all his privileges, left to rot in a dark, cold cellar, bloodied and beaten.

But kept very warm with the memory of Byakuya's ire. Quite a satisfying challenge. Byakuya had said he didn't enjoy arguing with powerless, defenceless men, but Gin thought the noble might have shown just a hint of satisfaction at the spirit behind Gin's resistance. 

The cuts were excruciating, exquisite reminders. Gin didn't really mind the pain. He didn't mind that he'd invariably lost in that confrontation, either. That had been inevitable; he'd known Byakuya would be able to over-power him in the end. The point was the challenge, not the result.

After all, he'd never really bested Aizen in a contest of pure strength either.

The thought made him roll onto his side, letting the floor dig reprimandingly into his cheek and shoulder. In many ways, he was still only what Aizen had made him to be. A mindless, vicious puppet, lashing out at friend and enemy alike, tearing down trust before it could be built, painting himself as unreliable, uncontrollable...Well, only Aizen had ever learned to control him. Ruined him for anyone else, really, but that had been part of the point. Gin was a weapon not meant for anyone else to hold.

Byakuya wouldn't manage it, Gin was suddenly sure. The Noble was just as likely to cast off anything that didn't bow to his expectations.

Which didn't speak well for his own likelihood of survival, he realised with a small frown. He couldn't quite bring himself to wonder if he'd already ruined his chances, even though he'd done nothing more than taunt Byakuya, daring the man to prove himself to be the ruthless, callous progeny of the Kuchiki Clan. To show that mercy hadn't made him weak.

Unlikely, but Gin didn't like these shifting family politics, or the thought that Byakuya might just be out-manoeuvred by one of his backstabbing relatives. Not that he was at all invested in Byakuya's well-being, of course. His status as Gin's _Master_ was nothing more than a word on a contract that Gin hadn't even read.

It meant nothing.

Byakuya couldn't tame him anyway.

Right?

In any case, he'd only assume Gin was being difficult purely for the sake of being difficult. He'd never believe it was anything more than that, and the thought was enough for Gin not to dwell on his own denials too much. He'd much rather bask in the aches of his wounds and whittle away the empty hours with pleasant dreams of how Byakuya had scowled, sincerely and delightfully aggravated by Gin's taunts. 

There was no way at all to keep track of the time. He didn't know if it was morning or night, whether it had been mere hours or days before Byakuya finally deigned to remember his existence. The door groaned as it was pushed open, objecting to the strenuous motion. Gin felt much the same way, not bothering to move immediately, although his grin was fixed readily in place.

“Ahh, Kuchiki-sama. Nice of you to stop in,” he murmured, although the glib lightness of the tone wasn't quite offset by how hoarse his voice sounded. His throat was parched from lack of water, dried from the cold air of the cell.

Byakuya didn't say anything, and Gin's smirk widened as he rolled carefully onto his knees, hands feeling blindly around him to make sure he wasn't going to run into any sort of obstruction. He lifted his head, and knew that even in spite of the strip of cloth he'd wrapped over his eyes to bind the wounds, he must have looked a pretty gory sight with all the blood running down his face.

“What's the matter? Not going to say hello?”

He'd been warned what would happen if he looked into people's faces without permission. Byakuya hadn't _actually_ blinded him. His eyes were still probably intact, or so he thought. The cuts across his face had been terribly precise, gouging across his eye-sockets, scouring the lids until he couldn't see anything except blood. He hadn't dared force them open again just in case he did actually do himself more significant harm. It hadn't mattered much anyway, since the cell was dark, but Byakuya's silence was odd. Maybe he was too busy admiring his handiwork.

“This feels like a very one-sided conversation,” he offered, managing not to sound even the slightest bit unnerved even though it was difficult to know what to expect. He was _certain_ it was Byakuya in the room with him, although he couldn't say how he knew except that surely it couldn't be anyone else. “You know, if you want to play hide and seek-”

His reaching hand encountered cloth; the edge of a robe. Gin beamed. “Ah. Found you.”

He wondered if Byakuya might decide to cut off his hand for his trouble, but after a long moment he felt strong fingers under his chin, tilting his head upwards for inspection. He thought there might have been a light source above him. The colour he could see behind his bound eyes was a dark, coagulated red instead of pure black.

“Was it worth it?”

It was a strange relief to hear Byakuya speak, even in admonishment. Gin bared bloodied teeth in reply. “Most fun I've had in weeks.”

“Hmph. I'd hoped some time alone to reflect might have made you reconsider your insolence.”

Gin licked his dry lips. True, he'd probably had just enough of being cooped up in this tiny little prison. At least in the Tower of Penitence he'd had a window. “Did you want to hear my apology? I've been practising it.”

“Really?” Gin thought he could decipher some droll amusement underneath the detachment. “Impress me, then.”

Gin took a deep breath. He'd been anticipating this moment, trying to guess Byakuya's expectations and deciding on how best to defy them as thoroughly as possible. He lowered his head to the ground, forehead pressing against the stone, mere inches from Byakuya's feet. “I sincerely apologise for my behaviour, Kuchiki-sama. I hope you can forgive my transgressions against yourself and your family.”

Much like with the very first apology he'd been forced to give Rukia, there was no real feeling behind Gin's words. Any sweetness in his tone was little more than disguised poison, but it might have fooled someone who didn't know him in the slightest. It was the best that could be hoped for.

Byakuya didn't sound terribly forgiving, though. “That's the best your practising could do?”

“Ahh. Sorry.” Gin didn't lift his head, though that was more because blindness and bloodloss made him feel a bit dizzy than because he wanted to reinforce his subservience. “I didn't actually have anyone to practice it on. Did you want me to try again?”

“I don't see the point of wasting either of our time.”

For a moment, Gin thought he might have overplayed his hand. Normally he was good at judging how irreverent he could afford to be, how tolerant Byakuya was feeling, although it was more difficult when he couldn't actually see the man. Even without being able to watch his expressions, Gin had learned to seek out other things. The curl of Byakuya's fingers, the angle of his stance...having only the nuances of his voice to guess by might have skewed his reading.

He was already bracing himself when Byakuya started to move, but instead of a blow he felt one fine-boned hand wrapping around his arm, hauling him to his feet. “Get up. Imprisonment is an easier punishment than you deserve. I'm sure I can find plenty of ways for you to express your contrition more productively.”

His legs were stiff and weakened from the lack of room to move, but Gin stubbornly forced them to hold his weight in spite of the ache. His smirk held, even as he inclined his head. “Yes, Kuchiki-sama.”

Byakuya turned to leave, and Gin didn't need to be told to follow. He didn't have a choice unless he wanted to be left standing blindly in the cellar. Byakuya's pace was one of regal dignity, just brisk enough that Gin felt a little discomforted trying to keep up when he couldn't see what was in front of him. He had to hope Byakuya was feeling generous enough to point out any obstructions that might be in their path, because he wouldn't have had a clue.

As such, he might have stumbled on the staircase if he hadn't been listening so intently to the cadence of Byakuya's gait changing. Apparently there wouldn't be any warnings after all, Gin mused sourly, but didn't allow it to reflect in his expression as he adapted his own steps to the climb. Almost as if it had been a physical shade over his skin, he could feel it as they moved out of the dark underbelly of the house, cobwebs of shadow slipping away.

And the moment they reached the top of the staircase, Gin became aware of all the eyes tracking their progression. Naturally Byakuya would command that kind of attention, but Gin could feel the intensity of sharp gazes focusing on him too. Gin imagined, with some satisfaction, their horror at what he must look like – some sort of bloodstained, monstrous ghost shadowing Byakuya's every step. The idea was quite an entertaining one.

They might hate him, but they would be in awe too, that he had tempted Byakuya's anger and lived, head held high, still smiling. Gin felt almost smug.

Though still relieved when they finally passed through a doorway that seemed to block out the weight of those interrogating eyes. Byakuya's steps slowed to a halt. “Your room. Clean yourself up.”

That was an order Gin was all too happy to follow. Orienting himself from memory, he managed to find the entrance to the bathroom with only a minimum of blind groping. The tiles were just as cold as the stone floor of his cell, but smooth and soothing. Gin let out a heavy breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

He felt dirty. Blood, sweat and grit had worked their way into his pores. The cellar hadn't been all that clean, which he doubted had been very good for his wounds, but his first concern was for his eyes. He filled the sink with cold water before tentatively peeling away the makeshift bandage he'd applied to the wounds. It came away stiff and heavy with dried blood. He cupped a handful of water between his hands and lifted it carefully to his face, pressing his eyes down against his palms to let cool liquid wash over the cuts.

_Ahhh_. He allowed himself a sigh of pure relief. As much as it stung, the chill of the water eased the burn of the cuts, and he could feel encrusted blood peeling away, flaking from his lashes. He rinsed cautiously,feeling delicately around the shape of the gashes, trying to figure out how deep they'd gone. He flinched when a second pair of hands closed over his own. He'd thought Byakuya wouldn't have lingered until Gin had scrubbed up to a more respectable state.

The chains on his shackles clinked and Byakuya pulled his hands from his face. “Open your eyes.”

Gin made a disgruntled, unwilling noise, but he didn't like the idea of Byakuya forcibly prying them open if he refused, so he gave it his best shot. While his lashes had come mostly unglued, the moment he tried to lift them he felt a warmer, salty wetness dripping over his lids. The fragile wounds had opened up again. He tried to wrench his hands back so he could shield his eyes from any further provocation, but Byakuya was quicker. The unexpected pressure of the Noble's palms pressing against his face – dirtying themselves in _his blood_ – was bewildering. “Ah-?”

“You'll be of no use to me like this,” Byakuya told him, as if that were patently obvious, and Gin felt a brief prickle of reiatsu sinking into his skin. It shouldn't have been so surprising. Every Shinigami knew a little of healing kidou...he'd just never actually known Byakuya to resort to it. Healing was for subordinates and weaker soul reapers who couldn't be trusted to do anything more useful in battle.

Gin felt conflicted. On one hand, the contact was uncomfortably invasive. A part of him almost expected Byakuya to sink his nails into Gin's eye sockets at any moment and blind him for good, made all the more harrowing by not being able to see and not having the slightest idea how to judge Byakuya's current behaviour. Gin hadn't been able to decipher if he was still angry or merely exasperated, and it didn't help that poisonous tendrils of memory were painfully reminding him of other, utterly unwanted touches.

Except that with all the times he'd helped Byakuya undress, that intimate but otherwise innocent contact must have soothed the worst of his fears on some instinctive level because he wasn't nearly as bothered as he thought he should have been. It hadn't been all that long ago that he'd flinched violently away from Byakuya's hands right here in this very room, unable to stomach even the thought of them on him. Instead, he nearly found himself leaning into that gentle pressure, because even if it stung, it was almost a pleasant feeling as Byakuya's reiatsu stroked lightly over the wounds, gently coaxing them closed. 

But compassion wasn't a word he felt comfortable associating with the fearsome aristocrat, so he felt compelled to reach up and touch his fingertips to the underside of Byakuya's wrist – not quite daring to push them away, but protesting nonetheless. “You're not very good at that, you know. Maybe you should ask your sister for lessons.”

The pressure against his face increased marginally, making him hiss before Byakuya abruptly pulled away. “Try again now.”

Hesitantly, Gin pried his eyelids up again. This time, the wounds didn't tear open, even though they still ached. His eyes watered painfully, although he wasn't sure if that was the only reason the world seemed to be a murky, indistinct haze of dull colours. “Kinda blurry.”

“If you're lucky, it'll be fine by tomorrow,” Byakuya informed him briskly. If he wasn't lucky...tough, apparently. Byakuya didn't sound terribly concerned. He did, however, reach for the shackles on Gin's wrist, and the kidou that bound them closed was abruptly snuffed out. The chains fell free. “I'll leave you attend the rest yourself. Tomorrow I'm expecting you to report for your duties as usual. Your punishment shall last until I believe you have properly atoned for your behaviour.”

Gin blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, and just before Byakuya turned to leave Gin managed to catch one brief, almost-lucid glimpse of the Noble's features. If he'd known Gin had a chance of catching it, perhaps he'd have been more careful, because his face wasn't the bland, impassive mask Gin was used to seeing. It was set far more pensively, his guard lowered for one brief moment that no one should have been privy to.

There was something even more devastatingly attractive about him, with his features softened, better even that the quiet fury that had banked his gaze during their confrontation. Gin felt something in his chest twist, but this time he couldn't blame anticipation or adrenaline. He sort of wished he hadn't seen it, because as with all the memories he might have rather wished to forget, he had a feeling that one would be back to haunt him.

* * *

His bed really was preferable to the hard floor of the cell. Gin had scrubbed his cuts clean, dressed them as best he could, and the minor irritation of their itch under the bandages was really all he could complain about. No doubt tomorrow when his punishment began in earnest, he'd have it much worse, but for the moment he allowed himself to indulge in the temporary luxury of a soft bed and clean sheets.

He'd been just drifting on the edge of sleep when the quiet fall of footsteps outside his door caught his attention. He'd have dismissed it as the irrelevant roaming of a servant, but there was a very distinctive difference between their hesitant shuffle and the purposeful, more arrogant stride of their masters. Since only one was ever likely to be visiting _him_ , particularly at this odd hour of the night, Gin reluctantly roused himself from his doze, turning towards the door as it silently stretched open.

“Kuchiki-sama?”

He still couldn't see all that clearly, but the figure in the doorway was the right height and build to be Byakuya, except...

Byakuya wouldn't have eased the door open so soundlessly. Byakuya didn't creep surreptitiously around after dark. He owned the House; he had no need to sneak around.

But as Gin opened his mouth to inquire, the figure suddenly wasn't standing in the doorway. Gin's vision was blocked out by a curtain of dark cloth right in front of him, and he had no chance to react at all as a hand closed suddenly around him mouth to silence any sound.


	11. Chapter 11

Gin awoke the next morning with his body sprawled halfway out of the futon, the blanket tangled uncomfortably around his legs, and his head echoing with the kind of anxious numbness that followed an especially restless night of dreams he couldn't remember. The vicious way his sheets were twisted suggested that hadn't been peaceful ones. Nightmares weren't an entirely uncommon occurrence, although it must have been something pretty heinous to have left him feeling so disturbed. The only image he vaguely remembered was Byakuya (or not Byakuya?) trying to smother him, and that wasn't the kind of thing that should really leave him shaken.

It hadn't been quite as concerning as some of the other lurid dreams he'd had about Byakuya's hands on him for an entirely different reason. 

Maybe just because it had felt so unusually real. Gin's fingers quested over his chin, miming that silencing hold he dimly remembered, but after that moment there was nothing at all besides muddled images that didn't call forth anything of substance. Just a dream, then.

He made the mistake of sitting up too quickly, and cried out at the unexpected sear of pain from his lower back. The tattoos...he must have aggravated them, if he'd been rolling around so violently in his sleep, but the intensity of the burn surprised him. He almost wondered if they'd gotten infected again. Time spent rotting in the Kuchiki's cellar might have weakened his body's defences. Moving with exaggerated care, and cursing quietly under his breath, he dragged himself into the bathroom, painfully lifting up his shirt and doing his best to examine the tattoo in the mirror's reflection.

He didn't really enjoy looking at it. It made him feel impotently helpless, despairingly bereft of the voice inside him that had often been his only companion. True, Shinsou had never been entirely pleasant company. His zanpakuto was too much like himself – devious, contemptuous, abrasive – but they'd understood each other quite well. It had certainly been a lot harder maintaining his usual smirking façade without Shinsou's sly voice whispering approving reinforcements in his ear.

He also didn't like remembering what it had felt like having the tattoo branded in place, kidou-inked needles piercing his skin in a thousand places...and thankfully, most of that memory had eroded away, but the parts that remained were traumatic enough he didn't care to dwell on them.

The ink had been a vibrant shade of green when it had been first seared into his skin, but looking at it now, it seemed a lot darker. Even when he lit a candle to augment the weak morning light, it appeared almost black, and a tentative touch made him hiss raspily. Even so, the rest of his skin wasn't reddened or inflamed. Not an infection, then, but it did seem a little different from usual. Aggravated, somehow.

He wondered if he dared to hope that maybe his sealed power was giving it hell. Shinsou might still be aware, trapped in a darker, more unpleasant cage than Gin was himself, struggling to break free. It was better than wondering if his reiatsu was being slowly suffocated, atrophied by lack of use, to one day be completely crippled and useless. 

He didn't want to think about that.

It was a small comfort to note that physically, he was definitely looking stronger. He ran his fingers over the subtle contours of his ribs which were no longer worryingly prominent. Neither were the jutting angles of his spine, and the plane of his stomach didn't look quite so hollowed. Still whipcord-thin, but not grotesquely skeletal. He supposed he owed the Kuchiki household some small measure of gratitude for that.

And it was kind of reassuring; if he could still get hungry, it meant his power was still deep down inside him somewhere. Not even the seals could sever a connection that fundamental.

Speaking of which, he suddenly realised he was absolutely famished. Maybe Shinsou _had_ been busy. The thought left him almost cheerful as he turned away from his reflection and begin getting ready for the day.

* * *

The koi didn't seem terribly offended by his lackluster serving of their meal, which Gin was ludicrously thankful for. Every single person who'd been overlooking his tasks that day had criticised him scathingly for every minor misdemeanour, expecting nothing short of perfection that he hadn't been able to achieve. He was too slow, too clumsy, too lazy, too careless...never mind that his sight had only barely come back to him and he was struggling against the sting of a dozen sword-lashings and the still-aching tenderness of his lower back. Byakuya's orders for him to work off his penance was apparently being taken very seriously by his staff, and they weren't allowing him any leeway for lax or hurried work.

He was pretty sure he never wanted to move, ever again. He was starting to think he'd rather take his chances in the cellar.

He knew he couldn't stay here forever, but Byakuya's garden was the closest thing to a refuge he had. It seemed most of the servants didn't dare come out here, and the sakura tree supporting his shoulders was almost like an old friend now. Surely it wouldn't mind hiding him for a few minutes while he gave his body a well-deserved rest.

His brief moment of piece was interrupted, however, by a soft feminine laugh that immediately set him on edge. After all, the last time he'd run into anyone here, he'd almost ended up drowned. He was trying to figure out which direction he should attempt to flee in when he heard the hushed, not-quite-whisper of another voice, this one male.

“W-we shouldn't...not here.”

 _That_ definitely caught his attention. The woman murmured something, too quiet this time for even Gin's sharp hearing, but the intent of it was obvious. The voices themselves were pretty familiar too, and Gin smirked to himself, hesitating indecisively for only a moment before deciding to creep closer for a look. Obviously they didn't have any idea he was here. One nice little benefit of having his reiatsu sealed, he supposed, was that it made him virtually invisible to those who relied upon sensing it.

Besides, he'd never have expected little Rukia-chan to be so bold. She had her fiancé backed up against the perimeter wall and was doing her very best to silence Hanatarou's objections with her lips sealed over his. Not at all the proper behaviour of a noble, Gin mused with a grin, but reckless gall of it was something he applauded. The Kuchiki's must have approved of the match, or else he doubted the wedding would have ever gone ahead. He supposed in their eyes it must have been respectable enough. The Yamada's weren't a very highly esteemed family, but then again, Rukia wasn't even a noble by birth. No doubt they'd thought it was far better than she should have even dared to hope for.

It probably would have galled them to know they were honestly making her happy. Perhaps that was why, in all the times Gin had seen them together, they'd always seemed so reserved and proper, as if being watched by unfriendly eyes. Or maybe Hanatarou was just shy, because he was still trying to squeak protests around the wicked-sounding things Rukia was doing with her tongue.

It was such a private, tender moment...Gin really couldn't resist calling out, “Does your brother know you do such things in his garden, Rukia-sama?”

He might as well have zapped them with a kidou spell for the way they jumped apart, frazzled as live wires. Hanatarou was turning a truly impressive shade of red, making abortive sounds that might have been excuses or denials. After her initial shock, Rukia looked much less abashed, glaring at him with a superior sneer. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Just feeding the fish,” Gin offered, gleefully displaying the now empty bowl. He grinned wolfishly, lashes fluttering in an exaggeration of apologetic innocence. “I'm sorry, was I interrupting something? It's just...I thought I heard a noise, and thought I'd come over in case you needed any assistance.”

Rukia must have been taking intimidation lessons from her brother. If looks could kill, her glare would have incinerated him on the spot. “We're fine.”

“Are you sure?” he wheedled, blithely cheerful. “Your fiancé looks like he's having some trouble.”

Hanatarou was choking rather audibly on his own mortification. Rukia assessed this coolly, then set her gaze back on Gin without so much as turning a hair. “He'll live.”

She wasn't the slightest bit ashamed...or if she was, she was hiding it marvellously. Gin almost thought he could start to like her. If she'd held up so well when he'd still been a Captain, he might not have been quite so savage with her.

...Okay, maybe he would have, but he'd have respected her more for it.

“Very well,” Gin said, bowing ever so slightly in feigned deference. “I'll leave you to your little interlude, shall I? I'll pass on your respects to your brother.”

“Go ahead,” Rukia told him blandly. “I'll have to remember to tell him you're not working hard enough if you still have time to come bother me.”

Touché. Gin's smirk became a little more fixed, but he supposed he didn't really mind keeping her little secret. If anything, it amused him more than not that she was sneaking around under her family's nose.

“It's fine, Rukia,” Hanatarou said, still blushing hotly, but all too eager to appease her. “I should get going anyway. I need to deliver that book-”

“Ichimaru can do it,” she told him promptly, casting a sly smirk at Gin. “Since he's not busy.”

There were worse things she could choose to do to him, and he might as well leave before she started remembering what those were. He pantomimed a slightly deeper bow. “Yes, Rukia-sama.”

The book Hanatarou presented him with was a thick tome that had obviously come from the Fourth Division; basic techniques of healing Kidou. Gin regarded it idly as Hanatarou apparently forgot himself and offered a sheepish bow of his own head. “Could you please give this to Kuchiki Natsume, with my regards.”

Gin faltered for a moment at that, but not long enough to miss the smug look on Rukia's face. “Ah, I don't really think I should-”

“Is there a problem?” Rukia asked haughtily, and Gin knew she was grating on him purposefully, and was even more annoyed that it was working. 

“I don't think Natsume-sama would be very happy to see me.”

“Oh,” Rukia said, as if giving this a moment of thought. “Well. Too bad. Come on, Hanatarou.”

She turned her back on him, leaving Hanatarou to stumble after her, still spluttering apologies and thank-you's in a confused tumble. Gin sighed deeply, wondering if he dared try and convince someone else to carry out the task for him, but he doubted anyone would care to help no matter how respectfully he asked.

Besides...it wasn't as though he was afraid of Kuchiki Natsume. Just rightfully wary, but this time he wouldn't give her an opportunity to try anything on him. If he had his choice, she wouldn't even have to see him, but as he approached the door to her personal quarters he couldn't quite deny his own dread. Honestly, he'd faced down Hollows with less unease. It was rather unfortunate that some small scrap of his pride had evidently returned, because he wouldn't allow himself to flee before making an attempt at giving her the book.

And to his disappointment, there was no possible way to slip it under the door and run without ever having to look at her. 

He screwed up his courage, and knocked...and waited, bracing himself for half a minute before knocking again, louder this time, but it shortly became evident that Natsume must not be in her room. Shameful as it was, his relief was palatable. She could be anywhere...she might not even be in the manor today. He could at least tell Rukia he'd tried, and maybe get Byakuya to pass on the book instead if Gin could convincingly argue that his aunt wouldn't want his presence to sully her day.

“What have we here?”

Gin jumped at the sound, and chided himself for it a moment later. He'd been so wrapped up in his own concerns, he hadn't even noticed anyone approaching. Thankfully, it wasn't Natsume herself or his afternoon might have just gotten a whole lot more unpleasant, but Asuka wasn't exactly a reassuring companion either. Still, at least _she_ was someone Gin felt sure he could handle. He bowed deeply to her, far more than was strictly necessary, because he knew the idea of special treatment would please her.

“Asuka-sama. I was just running an errand.”

She was dressed in an elaborate silken kimono. How she'd managed to approach so silently was beyond him. He briefly entertained the thought of recommending her to the Onmitsukidō. There was certainly a hard calculation to her gaze that would have done Soi Fon proud. “I haven't seen you around much. I suppose my cousin's been keeping you busy.”

“Very,” he agreed whole-heartedly. “In fact I should probably be going-”

“You were looking for my Aunt?”

She was blocking the corridor. Gin couldn't step past her without being obvious about it, and Asuka struck him as the kind of person who only became more interested the more her efforts were rebuffed. He gave a wary nod, valiantly hoping that maybe someone else _would_ appear just to divert that intense look in Asuka's eyes.

“She's with Grandfather Ginrei at the moment. Kazama's on his first mission today. I think she's worried about him.”

'Worried' didn't sound like a word Gin would apply to the frosty-faced Natsume, though it was interesting that Asuka would share that little insight with him. There were a lot more things she'd want to share, he'd bet, that he had absolutely no interest in.

“Ah, well if she's busy, I won't disturb her,” Gin said, eyes casting around for his escape route. “I can come back tomorrow.”

“Is that for her?” Asuka asked, peering interestedly at the book in his hands. “I could give it to her when she returns, if you like. I wouldn't want to hold you up with something so trivial.”

Gin's current life was full of trivialities. They were pretty much all he did, so he wasn't sure he entirely trusted Asuka's offer. Other members of the household had found ways of tormenting him under the guise of supposed kindnesses. She might very well destroy the book and blame it on him, or something equally petty.

But looking at her, he was pretty sure she wouldn't. She wanted something from him, and to that end she'd offer him this snare of a favour to let himself get trapped into owing her...or so she'd hope, but Gin was pretty good at slipping out of such entrapments and he was more than happy to make use of her offer if it meant avoiding Natsume.

He gave her the book. “With compliments from Yamada-san.”

“Oh?” she asked, giving it a surmising inspection, much as he had. “How interesting. I wonder what she wants it for.”

“For her son, perhaps?” Gin guessed, although he didn't quite think that was the case. If it had been a book on battle kidou, maybe, but not on healing. He said it more to prompt Asuka for her own thoughts, and he wasn't disappointed. 

“Don't be ridiculous. Kazama made it to the Fifth, not the Fourth.” She tucked the book into her obi, offering him the curve of a generous smile. “But maybe she's thinking of polishing her own skills.”

“Ah? I didn't realise she had the talent.” Although perhaps he should have guessed it, considering her lineage. Her father and her son both had shinigami powers; there was no reason to think she wouldn't. He didn't find it a terribly reassuring thought, though.

Asuka laughed. “Really? I think you'll find that most of us are...quite talented.”

She took a step forward, fingers resting lightly against his chest. Her nails were long, sharp, and perfectly painted. They reminded him of claws. “Perhaps some day I could demonstrate for you.”

He managed his best and most unassuming smile for her. “I think your skills would be wasted on me, Asuka-sama. You should find someone a little more refined who'd be able to properly appreciate you.”

“You think so?” She averted her eyes demurely. Pure artifice, of course, but she made quite a good show of it. “Though you were a Captain yourself, weren't you? I'm sure that would have given you all sorts of interesting experiences to draw from.”

“Perhaps I'll get a chance to tell you about them,” he assured her, full of false enthusiasm. “Whenever your cousin decides to lighten my work load. If you'll excuse me.”

He bowed, and this time she allowed him to pass, perhaps satisfied with the mistaken impression that she'd somehow extorted a promise out of him. He supposed she wasn't intolerable company. The feints of flirting were almost entertaining, and at the very least he was entirely sure he knew what sort of things she wanted from him. Dealing with so straightforward a manipulation was almost kind of a relief.

It was much better than facing off against Natsume, who was entirely opaque. So was Byakuya, for that matter, but oddly Gin didn't find him so uncomfortable to deal with. If anything, he found the lack of knowing strangely enticing at times; a puzzle he had yet to figure out. 

He was definitely glad to have escaped from that particular task unscathed, and with a few new intriguing thoughts to muse over. The servants would be expecting him to report straight back for whatever his next chore might be, but Gin let his steps drag and took a slightly more round-about route back to the main floor of the house. He wasn't exactly brimming with eagerness to get back to work, though later on he would decide that he might have saved himself some grief if he hadn't stumbled into Rukia again.

Though not directly, otherwise he might have been due for another scathing chastisement, but her voice carried easily through one of the paper-screen doors leading to the exterior walkway that circled the manor. It was that particular note of muted, wary tension that caught his undivided attention. 

“I don't really think that's necessary. You've only just returned from your mission, haven't you?”

“Concern for my health, Rukia-san? Thank you for your thoughts, but it's not needed. My mission wasn't very difficult. In fact, it wasn't a challenge at all, which is why I'm asking.” 

If Rukia's voice had made him pause, Kazama's made him freeze resolutely in place. He'd guessed that Rukia hadn't liked the man, but eavesdropping on their exchange, the animosity was obviously mutual. Rukia's curt politeness was met equally by Kazama's saccharine condescension.

And it was definitely a conversation he was interested in hearing.

“So how about it, Yamada-san? It would help me immensely to know how I might measure up to a Seventh Seat. You'll accept my challenge, won't you?”

If anything, Kazama's scorn for Hanatarou was even worse than for Rukia, but he masked it with just enough poisonous friendliness that the medic didn't seem to know how to respond. He faltered unwillingly, and Rukia valiantly leapt to his defense.

“Hanatarou's specialty isn't for combat...but if you're so insistent on a sparring match, perhaps you would accept me as your opponent instead?”

“Oh? Well...you're also unseated, aren't you, Rukia-san? I guess that would make things more fair.”

“Then you agree?”

“Of course. Thank you so much for your indulgence, _cousin_.”

Gin silently shook his head. Kuchiki Kazama was a man after his own heart, really...and Rukia was too stubborn to realise she'd just given Kazama exactly what he'd wanted. Beating even a Seventh Seat of the Fourth Division wouldn't really give him a reputation for anything but bullying. Rukia, however, was a much more speculative adversary.

“Then I'll accompany you to the training yard. I'll try to go easy on you, since you're new.”

“Much obliged, Rukia-san.”

Rukia's smooth arrogance was just as ferocious as Kazama's facetious courtesy. Both of them sounded so certain of their own strength, though if Gin were willing to place a bet, Rukia should have been a sure win, but-

Kazama sounded so _confident_. And wouldn't have challenged her unless he thought he had one up on her.

He stayed still and silent until he was sure the party outside had moved on, not wanting to get caught up in what was obviously a heated contest of superiority. He really should go report in for his own duties before anyone started wondering where he was, but really, how could anyone be expected to concentrate on their chores when there was a miniature family war playing out? If he cut through the house he'd be able to make it to the Training Ground before he missed anything too significant.

And if anyone asked he could always say he was looking out for Rukia in her brother's stead. He could honestly say he didn't trust Kazama's intentions in the slightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never expected it when I started writing this, but I found I absolutely love the interaction between Gin and Rukia. I ship their platonically snarky antagonism so hard.


	12. Chapter 12

Gin wasn't sure if he was amused or annoyed to discover that he wasn't the only one who'd snuck away from their duties to watch the fight. A small scattering of servants had set themselves against the windows overlooking the training field, and though his arrival earned him a few silent glowers, no one was willing to tell him to leave. They were all equally complicit, after all.

One of the servants he was more familiar with had set himself by the door which had been cracked open a few sparse inches to allow their viewing, and as Gin came to join him he murmured, “It's only just started.”

Gin could see them, Rukia and Kazama, facing off inside the square marked out for sparring matches. Kazama's zanpakuto was a very ordinary looking katana. If he'd released, it wasn't obvious, but then again, this was just supposed to be a friendly duel between family members. Gin doubted there was going to be anything terribly impressive on display.

Rukia moved first, perhaps spurred on by her own haughty claims or by the fact that her lover was watching, and Gin watched carefully as Kazama blocked. His swordsmanship was decent, at least. The Kuchiki's started their training at a young age, or so he'd heard. There was an elegance to his strokes that Gin had noticed in other Nobles of similar status; a flair to his strikes that was a little too much like showing off. They didn't teach that at the academy, only how to swing a sword in the most efficient manner possible.

It wasn't anything Rukia's experience wouldn't have been able to accommodate for; in fact, she might have found an opening there. It seemed like she was looking for one, pushing Kazama back with swift, precise swings that were starting to increase in speed.

He heard the servants murmuring in awe. “So fast.”

Gin arched an eyebrow, not so easily impressed. He'd seen Captains fight in all-out battles. This little scuffle wasn't nearly on that level, although he supposed to the uninitiated the blur of movement might seem far more astounding than it actually was. His own eyes were having no difficulty following the flow of the fight, and so he was the first to see what the rest of them probably couldn't.

As much as he'd disparaged Rukia in his thoughts, everyone knew her lack of a Seated position was only due to her brother's protective influence. She'd been more than strong enough to hold one for years, and Kurosaki's influence on her had only made her stronger. Gin had seen her fight on occasion, and if he'd had to judge he would have said she was easily a capable Third Seat. Maybe even a Lieutenant.

And she was _struggling_. Kazama was pushing her, looking reckless but fierce in his exaltation because _he_ realised it as well. It might have been different if Rukia had been willing to unleash Sode no Shirayuki's full potential, but she was clearly holding back and suffering because of it. His movements were faster than hers, and his strikes were glancing ferociously off her sword. Between one motion and the next, suddenly he was the one pushing her back, forcing her to retreat.

Gin found himself frowning, lips pressed into a thin line. He'd known Kazama must have had something up his sleeve, but even watching it, he was hard pressed to believe that this cousin, this _nobody_ , was fighting Rukia to a standstill. That he might even land a blow soon, and prove himself the winner of this unofficial contest. 

Gin decided he wouldn't like that. Not at all.

The servants gave him a startled look when he pushed the door further open, but the hiding was really unnecessary now. The combatants on the field were interested only in each other, and the only other witnesses were Hanatarou and another pair of Kuchiki family members who Kazama must have brought along for the sole purpose of attesting to his victory. They certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves, and didn't spare Gin so much as a glance.

Neither did Hanatarou, until Gin pointedly tapped him on the shoulder. “Aren't you going to do something? Your fiancee is going to lose, you know.”

“A-ahh!” Hanatarou looked agonisingly torn. His fingers were clenched fiercely on the hems of his sleeves. “I..I can't. She told me...When it comes to her family, I shouldn't interfere. She wants to fight her own battles.”

It was probably good advice, given how uniquely unsuited Hanatarou was to any kind of confrontation, verbal or physical, with any of the Kuchiki's. Gin rolled his eyes heavenward, sighing deeply.

“So I guess that means it's up to me, huh? How troublesome.”

“What are you...?”

Hanatarou's uncertain question drifted only belatedly to his ears. Gin had already walked past him, and before anyone could think to stop him he'd already crossed the boundary of the training square, right into the danger zone. “Rukia-sama!”

The look she turned on him was equal parts startled and aghast. She'd only just deflected one of Kazama's sword blows but to counter he'd been readying a spell with his off-hand, flames licking at his fingers. His gaze shifted over to Gin, and the former Captain saw him make the very deliberate decision to change the angle of his wrist, and thus the direction the spell would take.

Gin had known that providing himself as a nice, helpless, distracting target would undoubtably draw his fire. If Kazama disliked Rukia, he must have _despised_ Gin, and it would be easy enough to pretend he'd merely slipped in the heat of the moment. Gin was ready.

And Rukia...if she'd been trained by _his_ Division, she'd have known that this was her cue to go for the kill, regardless of what might happen to him. He'd given her the opening she'd needed to make the battle a decisive one...and she pointlessly wasted the nicely presented opportunity by lunging towards him in a courageous but entirely misplaced attempt to deflect the spell.

He might have forgiven her if she'd actually managed it, but he'd already known she wouldn't be fast enough. She was an idiot, he reflected resignedly as the burning ball of kidou sped towards him. It was going to _hurt_ , though at least he supposed the battle wouldn't continue if Kazama was satisfied enough with maiming him.

At the last moment, he thoughtlessly stretched out a hand to block the brunt of the attack. If he'd had so much as a lick of reiatsu of his own, he might have been able to shield himself. Without, he'd probably lose the arm, if Kazama was any good at kidou.

It happened so quickly, but just as he was bracing for the impact, the heat searing his fingertips, the ball of fire was suddenly deflected, spirally abruptly off to one side and scorching the ground with a burst of white heat.

He honestly wasn't sure which of the three of them was more surprised.

He stared at them both, bewildered. Had Rukia interceded? Had Kazama changed his mind and redirected the blast? But both of them seemed as mutely stunned as he was. The disbelief on their faces suggested they had no idea why Gin hadn't gone up in flames like a matchstick. A quick glance back over his shoulder was no help either. Hanatarou and the Kuchiki's were gawking soundlessly. The servants had all but fallen out of their hiding places, and each of them looked thoroughly unenlightened.

Gin recovered first, by sheer force of habit. The edge of his sleeve had started to smoulder from the nearness of the flames, and he absently patted it out. “Ahh, you should be more careful, Kazama-sama. Firing recklessly like that...you might hurt someone.”

That had been the intention, he was sure. Rukia was gaping at him indignantly and finally managed to find her voice. “What the hell do you think you're doing?!”

“I was looking for you,” he told her brightly, as if utterly unconcerned by the scorch mark on his sleeve that might very well have reflected the fate of his flesh. “Your brother requests your presence.” He bowed hastily towards Kazama, who hadn't yet relaxed his stance or put away his sword. “Sorry to interrupt your fight, but Kuchiki-taichou doesn't like to be kept waiting! Come along, Rukia-sama.”

He efficiently shepherded her back towards the building, ignoring her spluttering and Kazama's hard gaze on his back. He'd snatched Kazama's victory from him. The Noble probably wouldn't forget it, but since he didn't like Gin anyway it hardly made matters any worse. Gin was relieved that he didn't make any attempt to stop them, or to follow.

And that Rukia was so off-balance that he managed to shoo her all the way back into the manor before she gathered herself enough to punch him in the gut. “What are you, crazy?! Stepping into the fight like that. He could have killed you!”

She hit _hard_. Gin folded in on himself, but smirked at her through the pain. “No great loss then, huh, Rukia-sama?”

“Idiot. If you'd gotten hurt, my brother would have-!”

Broken the contract. Lost his honour. Punished her for it. Any one of those might have finished her sentence, so Rukia didn't bother doing so herself, still choking on her fury.

“I thought it might be better than letting you disgrace him by _losing_ ,” he muttered at her. She flinched, recoiling from him, and he added, “Letting a rookie like that push you into a corner. What did you think _you_ were doing?”

“Nobody asked you to interfere,” she growled back at him, stubbornly holding onto her anger even though she knew he hadn't been wrong. He might not have spared her much pride, but at least Kazama hadn't come out on top.

She might have been tempted to hit him again if Hanatarou hadn't come running up to them. “Rukia! Are you all right?!”

“I'm fine,” she grumbled, sheathing her sword, and even though she wasn't going to admit it to him, there was a grudging appreciation in her voice. She turned to look at Gin, and kicked him in the shin, albeit without much force. “Stop that. I didn't hit you hard.”

He straightened, pouting expressively at her. “So many people trying to attack me today. You Kuchiki's are such a bloodthirsty bunch. Just look at what happened to my poor sleeve!”

“How _did_ you deflect that kidou?” she asked, frowning at him. “You shouldn't have any reiatsu left.”

Which confirmed that she hadn't been the one to do anything...and she'd been the only one present who could have, which left Gin clueless. He grinned at her deviously. “I was a Captain, you know. You learn a few tricks along the way.”

She scowled at him, but seemed to buy it. She turned back to Hanatarou. “Sorry to drag you into this. You should return to your squad.”

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked her, and Gin did his very best to melt back into the wall. He might as well have ceased to exist, because the look of tender concern on Hanatarou's face was absurdly obvious. 

“I'll be fine. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He seemed reluctant to leave, but Rukia patiently reassured him that she was fine, that Gin was fine that everything was fine. Gin spent the time staring at his fingers, marveling at the lack of blistering before Rukia stomped her foot at him. 

“Come on. Let's go see my brother.”

Gin started. “He didn't actually summon you. I was only saying that.”

“I know,” she told him aggravatedly. “But if I don't talk to him first, someone else will, and I want a chance to explain.”

She was a brave girl, he'd give her that. “Uh huh. And what do you need me for?”

“I'll need someone to blame, of course,” she informed him stoutly. “You'll do.”

He snorted at her. “Fine. I'm sure your brother would love to thank me for keeping you out of trouble. Heading off your fun in the garden, breaking up your fights...”

“Might want to think up a good excuse for that hole in your sleeve,” she taunted him mildly. “Aren't you supposed to keep yourself neat and presentable at all times?”

“Oh? Did he give you one of those little rulebooks as well when you first became his sister?”

She bristled at him, but kept her head held high. Gin reflected that it might have been a shame, stepping in to stop Kazama from wiping the floor with her, but he didn't actually believe it.

* * *

The scolding Rukia was getting from her brother must have been truly impressive. It had been going on for almost an hour now, leaving Gin to wait outside the door wishing he could be listening in. Unfortunately, the room seemed thoroughly sound-proofed. Even when he'd been daring enough to creep closer and put his ear against it, he hadn't been able to catch more than the steady undertone of Byakuya's voice.

Gin covered for his boredom by grinning meaninglessly at the opposite wall, shifting every so often to make sure his knees didn't fall asleep. He entertained himself with the thought that, at least if Byakuya was still keeping him under watch, the spies were probably finding the wait just as tedious as he was.

When the door finally opened, Rukia stumbled out looking stunned and exhausted, as if the lashing had been a physical one instead of a verbal one. Gin didn't think Byakuya would really raise a hand against her, but didn't find it at all reassuring. She didn't even spare him more than a sullen glance and jerked her thumb at him to enter. “Your turn.”

He told himself he didn't have anything to worry about as he settled on his knees in front of Byakuya, even when the door closed ominously behind him. His brain helpfully pointed out that since the rooms were soundproofed, no one would hear him screaming, if that turned out to be the case.

It was one of the few instances he was grateful not to have to look Byakuya in the eye.

“Rukia tells me that you chose to intervene in her battle against Kazama, unprovoked.”

It was a statement, not a question. Gin kept his head down and his expression fixed. He couldn't read enough from Byakuya's tone to know how he felt about Gin's actions, besides skeptical.

“Putting aside the question as to why you weren't attending to your duties elsewhere, I find it surprising that you would do something so reckless. Surely you're aware that in your current powerless state, that stepping between two shinigami in battle is frankly suicidal.” With his gaze on the floor, Gin could see only the crisp outline of Byakuya's tabi as the man stopped in front of him. “Yet you choose to take that action. Why?”

Gin smirked. “Because I felt like it.”

“Really?” Byakuya said after only the briefest of pauses. He held his own silence with far more authority, but Gin refused to elaborate any further on his answer. To a certain extent, it was only the truth. Byakuya seemed to be considering this, because as much as Gin was known to be deeply calculating, he'd also possessed a certain reputation for meaningless whimsy when the occasion had suited him. “Rukia mentioned that it was your belief that she would have lost the battle, had it continued.”

“And what did _she_ have to say about that?” Gin asked, amused.

“Only that Kazama was indeed a challenging opponent, and that the end result had not been decided.”

Gin refrained from scoffing. Instead he only shrugged. “I suppose that's true too.”

He could tell Byakuya was staring hard at him, and it wasn't all that difficult to keep the grin on his face. It must have bothered Byakuya, trying to discern Gin's motive in the most underhanded frame of mind possible, wondering what he could possibly have gained from it and coming up short of anything that would have been worth the consequences. 

“Take off your shirt.”

Even after promising himself that the next time Byakuya handed out another one of those baffling, completely unexpected orders he wouldn't let it break his composure, _that_ one was a little hard to take. His mouth felt suddenly dry. He wasn't supposed to question orders, and he could read the nuances of Byakuya's words well enough to know that doing so now was only going to earn him a taste of Senbonzakura's steel. Even so, he only got as far as tugging the collar of his yukata a little wider before his fingers refused to obey him any further. “What for?”

Byakuya huffed a small noise, exasperation or disgust or perhaps just the smallest hint of amusement at Gin's faltering. “I need to see your tattoo. That you were able to deflect my cousin's kidou suggests perhaps your reiatsu isn't as sealed as it should be. Part of my responsibility as your keeper is to ensure that you remain powerless.”

So Byakuya hadn't bought the excuse he'd given to Rukia, for good reason. Gin shouldn't have been able to accomplish that feat, and Byakuya's theory made more sense than anything else Gin had been able to come up with.

Except that he was _sure_ that nothing had escaped past the seal, and he would have been the first to know if it had. It hadn't even occurred to him, but if there'd been any chance to exploit a fault, it was gone now. Byakuya's gaze was heavy and stern; his sharp eyes wouldn't miss anything.

Assuming there was anything to find. Gin sighed, but slipped off the shoulders of his yukata so it fell loose around his waist. Byakuya came to stand over him, Gin grudgingly aligned himself so the Noble could see the marks scrawled across his lower back.

And for a long minute, Byakuya did nothing but look, during which Gin had to struggle to hold still. “I see no breaks in the seal. Have you felt any changes?”

As if Gin would mention it if he had, but he let out a soft, bitter laugh. “If I'd thought I had my power back, I wouldn't have used it to step in between your cousin and your sister.”

“True,” Byakuya agreed calmly. “It would be quite out of character for you to reveal such a thing, which leads me to believe you still have no conscious connection to your zanpakuto. Am I correct?”

Gin swallowed painfully, but Byakuya's words demanded an answer. “Yes.”

Byakuya hummed in consideration, perhaps trying to determine Gin's admittance was to be believed. Gin was wondering if he could put his shirt back on yet, when he felt the lightest of touches against his back.

It was about the only time he would ever concede that Byakuya even made an attempt to be _gentle_ , but it didn't help. Gin yelped and lurched thoughtlessly away from that pressure, his lower back still as brutally sensitive as it had been that morning. He expected a harsh admonishment for that unintentional disobedience, but Byakuya merely sounded contemplative.

“It still pains you so much?”

“It comes and goes,” Gin said, because there was no denying the obvious but he didn't want Byakuya thinking of him as _weak_. He had no idea whether or not the continuing pain was normal, or if perhaps it hadn't recovered all that well from its previous infection. 

He made a valiant effort to stay still, his body braced stiffly, jaw clenched painfully, but Byakuya's second attempt to probe the tattoo dragged another strangled gasp out of him, and he kept flinching away from every touch.

Byakuya seemed displeased. “This would be easier if you lay down.”

“Here?” Gin asked, somewhat shakily. A cold sweat was already working its way over his skin.

“On the bed,” Byakuya said, although it was probably more a concession to his own comfort than Gin's. It would have been more awkward for him to stoop down to the floor. 

Byakuya's bed was an extravagant western-style construction, an oddly modern affectation, much like the plumbing in the bathroom. Younger Shinigami were prone to keeping up with the trends of the modern world, but even so, he'd have thought Byakuya was too mired in family tradition for such things. It might have been Renji's influence. 

At the very last moment, Gin's distractedly scattered thoughts decided to point out to him that he was about to climb into _Kuchiki Byakuya's bed_ one instant before he actually did so. He baulked, one hand wrapping defensively around his bare midsection, covering up the spidery tendril of the tattoo that licked hungrily at his ribs. “Do you really need to touch it?”

“I was instructed in the technique needed to properly assess the seal's integrity. I'll need to send a controlled pulse of reiatsu through each of its layers to ensure there are no fractures or weaknesses.” He paused for a moment, then in a less terse tone, added, “I have been told that you may feel some discomfort, but there will be no permanent harm done to you.” 

'Some discomfort' probably translated to 'horrifyingly agonising' given that Gin's well-being didn't really factor into consideration. Much as Gin wanted to protest, doing so would only end painfully and unpleasantly for him, and the worst Byakuya might get would be a wrinkle in his robe. Better to just submit and get it over and done with. Besides, if Byakuya actually did find any sort of fault in the seal, he wanted to know about it. It might help explain away some of the oddities of the day, and it could be something he could take advantage of in the future.

He lay down on his stomach, trying to ignore the fierce clench of unease at how uncomfortably vulnerable the position was, his back exposed. He could see his fingers, bone-white and fisting mindlessly in Byakuya's silken sheets. No matter how soft the bed was, he couldn't bring himself to relax, particularly when Byakuya took a seat beside him, weight dipping the mattress.

“Be still,” Byakuya ordered him, albeit with less bite than usual. He seemed distracted, probably trying to remember whatever instruction he'd been given so he could perform the task with expected flawlessness. This time when he reached for Gin, he didn't immediately target the tattoo, but instead rested his hands on Gin's shoulderblades where the skin wasn't nearly so sensitive. His fingers were pleasantly cool, his touch light and careful. Gin tried to focus on that as they began moving lower, down the curve of his spine to where the seals were branded violently into his skin.

He nearly bit his tongue trying not to cry out. It _hurt_ no matter how gentle Byakuya was trying to be, and that was only the physical touch. He expected the press of Byakuya's reiatsu to be so much worse; fearsome, glacial power scouring against the most most fragile part of himself now that he'd been severed so painfully from his own reiatsu.

“I'll begin now.”

He almost wished the noble hadn't felt the need to announce it. His body was taunt, wound to breaking point as the first measured pulse of Byakuya's reiatsu was injected into the seal, and-

_Ohh._

He'd expected agony, but the sensation Byakuya elicited wasn't nearly as painful as he'd expected. Even so, he suddenly forgot how to breathe, because he could feel something. The slightest of stirrings beneath the seal. Byakuya's reiatsu hadn't just seeped into it, but pierced _through_ it, examining the seal from all sides, and even though the feeling was painfully raw he could detect the lightest touch of his own power curling an enquiry against this foreign intrusion.

It was like seeing again after months of blindness. His faulty memory had been something of a kindness, because it had dulled the weight of that unbearable loss, not just the strength of his reiatsu but the awareness it gave him. Having that sense restored, even if only for a moment, was a cruelly double-edged relief, but he found himself almost drowning in that suddenly overwhelming sensation.

He still had no conscious control over his reiatsu. There was no hole in the seal, no means for his power to escape. It was only that while the seal itself cleaved his soul in two, completely repelling each half from the other, Byakuya's reiatsu created a brief, fragile bridge between the disparate halves. Gin hadn't felt so whole in months.

Though it was almost too much and too sudden. He shuddered under Byakuya's hands, an unrestrained moan escaping him that made the noble pause. Most likely it wasn't concern for anything except the possibility that Gin might roll away from him once again that made him ask, “Are you all right?”

“Don't stop.”

That wasn't what Gin had meant to reply, and it certainly wasn't what Byakuya expected to hear. Gin dared to glance through the silver shade of his hair up into Byakuya's dubious expression. There was a question forming there as Byakuya drew back, threatening to withdraw that tenuous connection he'd forged between the fragments of Gin's soul, and Gin moved without thinking.

Obviously, his sanity had snapped. It really wasn't all that unlikely, given how broken he'd been even before his imprisonment, but it was sheer suicidal stupidity to wrap his arms around Byakuya's neck, half embrace, half chokehold. He was only lucky Byakuya was stunned enough not to react immediately, because if he'd responded as a Captain should, Gin would probably have been cleaved into small pieces before he'd so much as touched Byakuya's collar.

“Don't stop.” This time it was less of a plea and more of a rough demand. Gin arched his body against Byakuya's, sinuous and distracting, because he could feel that the other man's reiatsu had become thoroughly entangled with the seal. He wouldn't be able to withdraw it easily without concentration unless he wanted to damage it or Gin, neither of which his stubborn sense of responsibility would allow him to do.

“Gin,” Byakuya growled, a low warning barely covering for his confused indignation. _That_ was a note he'd never heard in Byakuya's voice before. It was even better than the coolly ruffled annoyance which had been the best he'd dared to hope for.

Victory made him feel temporarily invincible, although that was hardly an excuse for what came next. It didn't help that, for a fleeting moment, he could still pretend he was Byakuya's equal. His reiatsu simmered potently beneath the seal, strong enough to match Byakuya's-

(Or _almost_ enough to match Byakuya's, he realised distantly with a sour note. His reiatsu wasn't as strong as it should have been. Time under the seal must have weakened it slightly)

-and it made him reckless enough to seal his mouth over Byakuya's, silencing all further protests.

It was an act almost worth the price of his imminent execution. Even in his unintentional, illicit imaginings, Byakuya's lips hadn't been so soft, his mouth so _hot_ , a furnace of teeth and tongue that defied the icy facade he wore. Beyond one small, startled sound that Gin eagerly swallowed, Byakuya's mouth was utterly slack in his confoundment, but that didn't bother Gin. He'd had a smattering of experiences with unresponsive, unwilling partners, and knew no shame at all. He plundered Byakuya's mouth sacrilegiously, imagining he could taste the shock and the sweetness of inexperience that left the noble so thoroughly undefended against him.

Alongside the exhilaration of wild abandon, there was an equally seductive, purely physical pleasure. Gin hadn't touched anyone like this in...how long? He still hadn't been able to recall, but he was sure he'd enjoyed it once. Gin had never been one to deny himself any sort of gratification, and his body certainly remembered what it wanted. Byakuya's inattention had allowed Gin to straddle his lap, his weight balanced precariously as the mattress dipped further under their combined mass. Byakuya's head was forced to tilt backwards to meet the kiss, the angle just delightful. He purred against the noble's mouth, his own long fingers gently caressing the exposed plane of Byakuya's throat.

_That_ finally snapped Byakuya out of his daze, and Gin's world swung abruptly as he suddenly found himself on his back, his wrists pinned, and Byakuya looming over him looking positively murderous. 

“You _dare_ ,” he hissed, grey eyes bright with rage, utterly enchanting. Gin wasn't deterred in the slightest, one leg hooking up over Byakuya's hip, proving this position wasn't any less salacious than the last. Even with his hands captured, Gin could still grind his body upwards, drunk on maddening sensation and the need for a more satisfying friction. The resulting bewilderment on Byakuya's face was priceless.

It was quickly wiped away by an even more furious snarl, and for one moment he seemed to forget himself because he lashed out angrily with his reiatsu, a crushing, suffocating force.

Or Gin would have found it so, if Byakuya hadn't still been wrapped around the seal, but that scythe of power was forced inwards and Gin's own reiatsu rose to meet it with a brilliant clash that left both of them reeling from the unexpected, intimate spark of ignition.

Gin, at least, had felt that particular fission before. He'd had the experience of mingling reiatsu with past lovers, though not many had been able to stand up to the crushing weight of his own. From the way Byakuya was left trembling, Gin guessed it was his first time, and might have been amused if he hadn't been struggling to breathe. Inexperience indeed; but Hisana hadn't possessed any reiatsu, or so the rumour suggested. It was one of the reasons why Byakuya's clan had been so vehemently against the marriage. No doubt Byakuya had been terribly careful with her, binding his power up tightly, assuming he'd ever gotten over his fridgity enough to consummate that particular bond...

Byakuya was so badly unprepared for it, that for the longest of moments he was completely boneless, his body resting atop Gin's, still shivering in a far too enticing fashion. Gin allowed himself a few precious seconds to just _bask_ in it, Byakuya's breath rasping against his collarbones, legs tangled, hips slotted together in a way that made the arousal of both parties painfully obvious. If nothing else, he had _that_.

Though not for more than a few seconds, because the moment Byakuya recovered his senses, Gin felt his power withdrawing from the seal, and with it, that tenuous awareness of his power. He squirmed in dismay, but Byakuya's grip on his wrists hadn't slackened and Gin wasn't in any kind of advantageous position. “W-wait-!”

It felt like there was an almost audible _tear_ when Byakuya pulled free, and the resulting severance was horrifyingly deafening. Gin choked on bile, on despair, going limp and silent as he searched vainly for that hint of a connection and found only the forbidding brand of the seal.

And he _hurt_. Everything hurt. Without that tentative link to his reiatsu he was painfully mortal again, and the fleeting pleasure he'd enjoyed was quickly incinerated by the flare of agony from his back. As Byakuya climbed off him, cool composure reasserting itself, Gin had no such dignity to hold onto. He curled into a ball and tried not to whimper.

“Get out.”

The deadly venom in Byakuya's voice was enough to piece through even Gin's haze of misery. He made the mistake of looking towards Byakuya's face, but thankfully the noble was turned away from him. The way he held himself impossibly, unnaturally still concerned Gin even more than the malice in his voice. It was enough to put fear into even _his_ heart, and he shakily climbed to his feet, gracelessly staggering towards the door. He nearly forgot to fix his yukata, painfully slipping his arms back through the sleeves, but his scrambled wits vainly gathered themselves as he reached the threshold. He should...say something, he thought. Apologise, perhaps. Beg forgiveness. Try and do something to mitigate his impending execution.

“I said _leave_.”

Then again, if he wanted to continue living _right this second_ there was nothing to do but flee and hope Byakuya was too unbalanced to release his shikai. Gin would have no hope of outrunning it.


	13. Chapter 13

His door didn't have a lock on it. Not that it would have done him any good if Byakuya had wanted to force his way in, but Gin might have felt better about it. He was a dead man, and the only possible reason he could think of for why he wasn't already a corpse was because Byakuya was probably going to find some inventive way of making him suffer horribly first. 

He was so cold, inside and out.

Staggering into the bathroom, he turned on the shower spray as hot as his skin could stand, and sank down on the tiles beneath it, not even bothering to strip off his yukata first. The seals on his back protested both the heat and the wet friction of fabric, but at least the pain was _something_ he could hold on to. Better than the resounding hollowness inside him.

Although that brief reassurance that at least it was still _there_...he supposed that was a greater kindness than he deserved, even though it was the highest form of cruelty, reminding him of what it had felt like to be (mostly) whole before tearing that from him once again.

Maybe Byakuya _was_ as bad as Aizen. The thought made Gin laugh, a harsh, ragged sound that quickly trailed off into nothing, because _Aizen_ would never have been caught off-guard, not even by Gin crawling into his lap. _Aizen_ would never have looked so utterly shocked, eyes wide and revealing far too much, no matter what tricks Gin might have tried with his mouth.

And Aizen certainly had too much self-control to make any sort of sound, a gasp that might have been a shuddering groan if Byakuya hadn't lost the breath for it. So unexpected, so delightful, so dangerously arousing. Gin closed his eyes, his own hands mapping out the points of contact, Byakuya's mouth against his own, ebony hair draping silkily over Gin's forearms, his hips between Gin's thighs. He shakily parted the saturated fabric across his legs and, _yes_ , he was still aching from that staggeringly forbidden contact.

He was going to die tomorrow anyway, Gin reasoned with himself, reaching beneath the folds of the cloth. There was no reason not to.

Such an absurdity of want. He should hate Byakuya, and perhaps on some level he did, but that did nothing to diminish the attraction. It was the contradiction Gin was drawn to, Byakuya representing such unthinkable, confusing, appealing extremes. His features, so unusually beautiful for a man, with thick dark lashes and unexpectedly sensuous lips, and Byakuya had no idea at all how to turn them to his advantage and Gin liked that too. The cold indifference that covered for alarming rawness and inexperience. The fragility of such untouchable beauty that masked such monstrous reiatsu.

_Power_. Gin had always wanted it, craved it, and Byakuya's effortless mastery was something that made desire twist low and urgent in his gut.

Gin had never been loud or over-demonstrative in his passions. Even alone and unwatched, he was too conscientious to give much away, all sounds kept firmly unvoiced and the curtain of falling water disguising the uneven hitching of his breath. He couldn't even recall the last time he'd done this, but it came to him easily; tormenting himself slowly with wicked fingers, imagination teasing him with the remembered weight of Byakuya's body and that one, unforgivable shudder of pleasure as his reiatsu had whet itself against Gin's.

Climax seared all thought out of his mind, so unexpectedly intense that Gin didn't fully manage to silence one sharp gasp at the peak of pleasure. The hazy aftermath left him bonelessly incapable of fear, and he was oddly reminded of that pleasantly drugged afternoon he'd spent in the corner of Byakuya's bedroom, lulled by the inoffensive whisper of pen on paper.

Thinking about it, Gin wondered if Byakuya was furiously working through all the paperwork he'd need to sever their contract, of if he'd been forced to delay in order to find the same relief of that tension Gin had.

He stayed there, curled up on the tiled floor, unwilling to drag himself to bed, until the water had gone unbearably cold.

* * *

Since there was no way in hell Gin was going to spend the last day of his existence mopping the floor of the Kuchiki Manor, he didn't even make the effort of getting out of bed. He'd managed to cocoon himself quite comfortably under the blankets, and was doing an extremely good job of dozing despite all the complaints his body was trying to impress on him after the previous day's shenanigans.

Unfortunately, he was too well-trained to sleep deeply. He was fuzzily alert and tensing at the sound of approaching footsteps before he realised they were too light and too quick to be Byakuya's. With a sigh, he resettled, eyes closing.

Considering he was thoroughly obscured by the blankets, Rukia still managed to aim a remarkably accurate kick at his ribs. “Hey, Ichimaru.”

He debated ignoring her, but if he tried to play dead, she might very well help him out with that. She was probably here to deliver the message in her brother's stead. No doubt the Family Head wouldn't even deign to look at him any more.

No sense in putting off the inevitable. Gin dolefully pulled the blankets back so he could glare up at her. She glared right back, albeit only with the typical amount of irritation he'd come to expect from her.

“You look like hell,” she told him stoutly.

He snorted. “And you're looking just lovely yourself this morning, Rukia-sama.”

He'd gotten far too used to assigning that particular honorific to the end of her name. He shook his head as if trying to dislodge the habit, while Rukia stared at him carefully.

“What are you, sick?” There was a furrowed line between her eyes, and she added a mutter under his breath that didn't seem wholly meant for him, “I didn't really think Nii-sama would be all that hard on you.”

Gin laughed dryly. “Like he has any reason to go easy. Why don't you just tell me what he sent you to say and then leave me be, hmm?”

Her scowled deepened. She didn't at all like his audacity at giving _her_ a command, but obedience was too deeply ingrained in her. “He wanted you to know that he still expects you to feed the koi even though you're excused from all other obligations today. That's all.”

She'd almost reached the door before Gin managed to sit up, his spine protesting every inch of the anxious movement. “Wait, that isn't...that can't be the only thing he told you.”

“What were you expecting?” Rukia asked, and even though her tone was bland, she wasn't nearly as adept as she thought she was at hiding her curiosity. She really sounded like she had no idea at all...but then again, maybe she was really better than he thought, and was just taunting him.

“An execution date, for starters,” Gin told her, keeping his voice admirably steady. “Or at the very least, how long before he's going to get rid of me.”

Rukia paused, seeming taken aback. “He didn't mention anything like that to me.”

She obviously wanted to ask about it, but didn't dare pry into her brother's affairs. Not that Gin would have told her a thing, anyway, even though he was boggled as to why Byakuya hadn't made a date yet. The man was usually devastatingly thorough once he'd made up his mind about something. Maybe he was letting Gin wallow in dread for a day first.

“Although he might change his mind if you keep looking at people's faces when you're not supposed to,” Rukia added acidly, and Gin lowered his eyes reflexively even though he didn't think it mattered all that much.

Unless – and he could barely bring himself to contemplate it let alone believe it – Byakuya and his be-damned honour _still_ wouldn't let him call off the contract. Maybe there weren't any terms in there prohibiting the molestation of your owner, in which case Gin was really regretting having not read it before he'd signed it.

“Just don't get slack because my brother's going easy on you today,” Rukia said, interrupting his thoughts. “He'll probably make you work twice as hard tomorrow.”

It was one of the most backhanded 'get well soon' messages he'd ever heard, but Rukia was gone before he could snipe back at her. Gone, and leaving him with a day of nothing except feeding the fish. It was practically a holiday.

What on earth had he done to deserve that?

* * *

Sleep was overrated. Or else Gin had utterly lost all ability to remember how to relax, because even the tedium of housework might have been better than the boredom that was slowly overtaking him. In the end, he resorted to feeding the fish out of sheer desperation, and then decided not to return to his room. The garden was a lot more pleasant, and the sakura tree was almost his new best friend. If only its trunk was as soft as Rangiku's cleavage, then he would have cheerfully granted it that title in a heartbeat.

Still, everything was much too placid for his liking. He was left very profoundly to his own devices – no sneering cousins, no Rukia fornicating in the bushes – and nothing to keep him occupied except attempting to calculate the probability that Byakuya wasn't going to execute him juxtaposed against the kind of thoughts that definitely _would_ get him killed. 

And he wondered what Byakuya was doing. He'd lost all track of time, so he wasn't sure if the Captain would be attending to his duties or residing in the manor today. He didn't know which was better to hope for. At least having Byakuya around made him feel less like he was at the mercy of every single other member of the family. If he'd been at all willing to concede that Ichimaru Gin could feel anything like loneliness, he might have been tempted to seek out Rukia to see if he could bother her a little in the limited capacity he still could. Or if he'd been much more desperate, he might have gone and offered his services to Asuka, but last night had all but affirmed the fact that he had no interest at all in what she might have to offer him.

Which was a little odd, because Gin certainly had no problem with women. He was just as delighted by Rangiku's assets as anyone, although perhaps he was a little less susceptible to them due to long association. Maybe it was just that she'd ruined him for all other women, much like Byakuya had probably ruined him for all other men, save the only one who might have outmatched the noble for sheer charismatic magnetism and raw power.

But Aizen was dead, so that ruined any point of comparison. 

The rest of his very short life was probably going to be terribly frustrating, Gin realised with droll resignation. His own fault, he supposed. He'd always gotten a little too carried away in the pursuit of his own amusement.

Most of the day managed to pass him by completely without coherent recognition, and only as the sun started to set behind the walls of the manor did Gin realise he was probably still expected to report to Byakuya for his final duties. Madly, he almost _relished_ the thought of that confrontation, regardless of what Byakuya might have in store for him. Punishment? Fine. Gin had gotten to know Senbonzakura's edge quite well over the past few weeks. He could endure another maiming, if that's what Byakuya wanted. He could probably still get by without his hands. Or his eyes. Or his tongue.

It was probably only another sign of his rapidly dwindling sanity, but he was feeling so unexpectedly jaunty about it he made it all the way to the threshold of Byakuya's room before he began having second thoughts. His hand was even poised right before the act of knocking as he wondered if maybe Rukia _had_ meant he was excused from reporting to Byakuya for the day, but before he could linger too long in indecision a command cut through his thoughts from the other side of the door.

“Come in.”

There must be some trick to the sound-proofing, he mused inanely, for it not to work whenever Byakuya didn't need it. Some sort of kidou spellwork in the doors. Maybe that was also how Byakuya had known he was there, despite Gin's lack of reiatsu making him a spiritual blindspot. He'd never seemed to have any trouble telling when Gin was around. There was obviously some kind of underhanded trickery involved.

Gin entered, doing his very best to seem sober and not nearly as haphazardly unbalanced as his current thought processes. He didn't dare risk a look in Byakuya's direction, given Rukia's stern reminder about that. He took his accustomed place, kneeling in the center of the mat, and bowed. 

And waited for what felt like an inordinately long time, until he almost thought Byakuya wasn't actually going to acknowledge his existence. He could hear Byakuya working studiously at his desk, the scratchings of pen on paper like the fingers of apprehension trying to claw at Gin's insides. It felt like he was running on borrowed time, the sands in his own personal life-expectancy hourglass slipping away, and even though he wasn't supposed to say anything without permission perhaps this was the time when he should be throwing himself at Byakuya's feet and working up as sincere an apology as he could possibly manage in the small chance that it might help. 

Except that, astoundingly, Byakuya beat him to it.

“I owe you an apology.”

It was a good thing Byakuya wasn't looking at him and visa versa, because Gin didn't think he could have covered for his bewilderment. Sure, the noble's tone had been utterly bland, but Byakuya probably had more fingers on one hand than the number of apologies he'd given in his entire life, and the fact that Gin was the recipient of _any_ of them was almost as unbelievable as what it seemed like Byakuya was apologising _for_.

“I don't understand,” Gin replied unevenly, annoyed at his own faltering, but he almost wondered if somehow his memory was playing some sort of absurd trick on him and the previous day's events hadn't happened like he thought they had.

A horribly disturbing thought.

Though hopefully an unfounded one, because Byakuya sighed tersely and grudgingly elaborated, “I believe my explanation yesterday of what you might experience during the examination of the seal was incomplete. Be aware that it's only because the instructions I was given appear to have been somewhat...lacking.”

Someone, somewhere, had obviously gotten a very thorough rebuke from the Captain of the Sixth today. Gin was sort of sorry he hadn't been around to see it, beneath the dumbfoundment he was feeling about what Byakuya was implying. “You mean that was...normal?” 

He could easily picture Byakuya's brow furrowing, the way it did when he seemed to be assuming Gin was being deliberately difficult. “It was one possible reaction among many that I hadn't taken into consideration, nor thought to warn you about.”

As straightforwardly unperturbed as he sounded, Gin was sure Byakuya wasn't nearly as at ease with the whole thing as he was feigning to be. Still, it answered an important question. “So...you're not going to kill me.”

“No,” Byakuya said curtly, and from the sound of his voice he'd finally decided to turn around and look at Gin, who was careful to keep his eyes on the floor. “Obviously breeching the seal left you with very little control over your own actions. It would be senseless to punish you for something you wouldn't have willingly endured.”

It should have been enough to breathe a sigh of relief and leave it there...but from the dark note in Byakuya's voice he'd gotten at least partially the wrong idea. The way he'd phrased it, he seemed to think that Gin's reaction had been something entirely out of character. True, he probably wouldn't have done it without the incentive of lowered inhibitions – that intense bolt of pleasure from having the two halves of his soul rejoined – but it wasn't as though he'd found the whole thing horribly unpleasant.

Although he supposed Byakuya might not see it that way. He didn't know where Gin's boundaries were actually drawn, and he undoubtedly had Gin's own refusal against any sort of sexual favours for the clan in the forefront of his mind. Easy to make the assumption it was still in affect, and that Gin hadn't intentionally done anything of the sort, particularly when there was plenty of reasons why he shouldn't have wanted to. Would Gin willingly embrace a person who more or less held his life hostage? Grope someone he should hate beyond all reason? Kiss another man? Well, he'd done all that and more in his rather sordid lifetime. Obviously Byakuya didn't know him very well if he thought Gin wouldn't commit any and all of those acts quite cheerfully.

And it would be better not to enlighten him. Let him assume that Gin had been out of his wits with the breeching of the seal, that it had been nothing more than a mistake better forgotten as quickly as possible for the comfort of all involved, with all loose ends neatly tied, no need for further thought.

Byakuya might have preferred it that way, but Gin found he didn't _want_ the noble to dismiss it so easily, as if it hadn't meant anything at all. Perhaps it shouldn't have, but Gin hadn't been the only one left reeling from that crude, undignified grind, and Byakuya hadn't been as faultlessly unaffected as he might have liked to pretend he was.

Gin dared to peek out from under the curl of his lashes for an indirect glimpse of Byakuya's face. “Then, if I asked, would you do it again?”

He was sure he very _nearly_ fractured Byakuya's composure. So close...but Byakuya's expressionless mask only hardened by a few degrees. “Not unless it becomes necessary...an eventuality I don't think you should hope for.”

“Why not?” Gin asked innocently. “I didn't think it was _that_ bad.”

Except for the aftermath, but that wasn't what his tone implied. Byakuya was doing his very best not to be baited, but his expression was trying to turn into a scowl. “I find it hard to believe you appreciate being taken advantage of-”

“Is that what you thought it was?” Gin interrupted with a startled laugh. 

“It couldn't possibly be anything else,” Byakuya ground out aggravatedly. “Your position hardly enables you with much liberty for choice.”

Except that Byakuya had expressly given him permission to accept or deny any requests of that nature, and even if an offer hadn't been explicitly made, Gin hadn't said no. Besides, it wasn't like Byakuya had been the one making any advances.

But instead of choosing to remind Byakuya of that, he smirked coyly. “Is that the position where I was on top, or when I was beneath you?”

He was really fraying Byakuya's temper now. He didn't even see the man move; only felt the hand wrapping around his throat, hauling him up a few inches until his knees barely touched the floor. 

“You will _always_ be beneath me. I _own_ you, Ichimaru Gin, and will continue to do so for the rest of your natural span. In my position, I have every right to exploit you in any manner I wish, so it would be unwise for you to invite me to do so.”

“But you wouldn't,” Gin murmured, and it was as much a revelation as an assertion. He had no reason to believe it, really. Gin had learned from the best why even the most sincere face wasn't to be trusted, and certainly nobles on a whole weren't a terribly scrupulous group as had been painfully proven all too recently...but Byakuya really could have done so much worse to Gin by now. He could have assigned tasks that Gin would only be sure of failing. He could have allowed Gin to be found guilty from Kazama's accusations and been absolved of all responsibility to this slave that he neither wanted nor needed. He could have let Gin drown in the pond.

None of which was because Byakuya was terribly fond of Gin on a personal level, but that really only gave Gin more reason to believe in his integrity. It was one of the few things Gin might dare to put faith in after a lifetime of learning not to trust.

Byakuya released him with a huff of breath that wasn't quite a sigh. “I wouldn't recommend testing my patience. In any case, I have no interest in anything you might seek to offer.”

Gin rubbed his throat thoughtfully. “Ohh? That's not how I remember it...”

“Cease speaking,” Byakuya ordered him harshly, “before I remove your tongue.”

Gin closed his mouth, but didn't deign to hide his smirk. Byakuya didn't blush, but he looked almost of the verge of flustering. A small victory, but evidently it was enough that Byakuya was harassed enough not to want Gin pressing the point any more than he had. 

“You're dismissed. Since you seem well enough, you can report for duties as usual tomorrow. I may not have chosen to punish you for this latest infraction, but your previous disobedience hasn't been forgotten. The servants will be told not to go easy on you.”

It was still a win, Gin decided as he stood to leave, even though he was going to be painfully sore tomorrow.


	14. Chapter 14

The servants, it seemed, were doing their very best to avoid him as much as they could possibly manage it. Whether it was because of the last gruesome punishment he'd endured or the way he'd flouted defiance in Kazama's face, they all seemed desperate to shun him so as not to have to take responsibility for whatever madness he might inflict on the household next.

Gin was mostly amused by it. At least it meant he didn't have to put up with anyone looming over his shoulder, criticising his every move. Instead he was shooed away on trivial little chores he could accomplish without any sort of supervision, dusting sills and shelves in some far flung branch of the manor.

He didn't strictly mind the solitude. The servants of the house may have become more familiar with him, may have tolerated him, but he would never have friends here. They knew better than to get too close, so Gin hadn't bothered trying to charm anyone. It would have been a wasted effort. The collar set him apart. He still hadn't completely adjusted to the ever-present constriction of it, and every so often he would catch someone staring at it with a sort of horrified fascination. Slavery had been absent from Soul Society so long that apparently it was still a perplexing novelty.

Though the way most of the Nobles treated him suggested they didn't have the slightest problem with it. Too used to being served, too comfortable with abusing their power, Gin supposed. It might be nice if they started avoiding him too, but apparently they weren't at all intimidated by Gin's growing reputation. Gin spotted one approaching him from his peripheral vision, and did his best not to frown too obviously. 

“Hey you! Slave!”

Gin hadn't learned the name of this particular family member, but recognised him easily enough. He was one of the pair who'd been with Kazama on the day of his bout with Rukia. He'd also been one of Gin's more regular tormentors, and seemed to take an especially sadistic pleasure in it. Gin had learned to feign a particular kind of blank incomprehension around him, as though he didn't understand there was anything malicious behind the harassment. The man tended to lose interest if there wasn't any sport to be had.

So Gin bowed deeply for him, his expression perfectly black, hiding all his internal irritation and mockery. The Noble gave him a lazily indulgent smile, as if Gin's pretended submission was some sort of victory. 

“Get down to the cellar and fetch a bottle of sake for us. We'll be celebrating upstairs.”

He paused a moment, as if considering whether or not he should follow up that command with something derisive, or perhaps a casual ‘accidental’ blow since there were no witnesses around to stop him, but Gin's meekness didn't give him any easy target to strike against. Instead he made a rudely dismissive gesture and turned to ascend back to the upper floor.

Without actually giving Gin sufficient instructions on where to _find_ a bottle of sake in the enormous bowels of the cellar, nor where this supposed celebration upstairs was, but Gin was used to that. No doubt he'd be scolded for tardiness whenever he finally managed to find the man again, but such were the petty aggravations Gin had learned to put up with. It wasn't as though there was anyone he could complain to. Byakuya certainly wouldn't care.

At the very least he _did_ remember where to find the cellar, retracing the route he'd walked blindly, following Byakuya's footsteps. The door creaked noisily when Gin pulled it open, which was interesting considering how well the rest of the house was taken care of. The cellar must not see enough visitors to warrant regular maintenance. Considering Gin's only experience with it was of the little dungeon room he'd been locked in, he supposed they wouldn't have much reason for it.

He made it down the first six steps before he realised he was going to have a problem. The cellar was completely lightless, no windows or lanterns that he could see. Gin didn't really mind the dark, but he didn't want to spend too long groping around blindly for glass bottles that may or may not contain what he was looking for, particularly when he was already likely to be chastised for taking too long. If he'd had his power, it would be easy enough to spark a bit of reiatsu at his fingertips to light the way, but since he was depressingly without, he'd have to go and find a torch of some kind. 

He turned around, but the moment he took a single step back towards the door, it suddenly slammed shut in front of him.

Gin paused only long enough for the echo to disappear in the darkness, senses prickling, though out of wariness, not fear. It would take more than darkness to disorient him. He ascended the rest of the stairs, reaching out for where he remembered the door handle to be. It turned in his hand, but the door refused to open even when he set his shoulder and all of his weight against it. It was locked, or jammed, and he doubted it it was accidental. Certainly it would have taken more than a gust of wind to shift such a heavy door.

Stupid of him not to expect it, really. Apparently that cousin had come back for his sport after all. He breathed a disgusted sigh at himself, feeling distinctly annoyed, and wondering how long he'd have to wait for someone to come looking for him.

At the very least, Byakuya would, if only to make sure Gin hadn't slipped his leash. That was almost comforting, but Gin would rather not have to be rescued and face the inevitable chastisement. The chances of someone passing by were probably slim, and in any case, Gin wasn't going to lose any dignity by rattling the door or shouting for help when whoever had locked him in was probably still listening. He felt beneath the handle, fingers blindly tracing a swirl of metal that was most likely a keyhole. It wouldn't be the first lock he'd had to pick, even in the dark. If the door was blocked by some other method, he could probably pry it open or lift it off its hinges, though for any of those plans of action he'd need the right sort of tool. He'd have to go down and check what the basement had to offer him. 

A wonder that they didn't have anything better to do than inconvenience him, Gin thought sourly. If they thought being locked in a dark basement was going to rattle him, they'd be sorely disappointed. Gin was far more concerned with coming up with a decent excuse if he ended up having to break the door to get out, but as he turned around to descend the stairs he felt a sudden, disorienting wave of vertigo and nearly lost his footing.

“What...?” The sound was swallowed up by the darkness and his own muddled hearing. His senses were swimming in a way that was unpleasantly familiar and not at all natural. He made one valiant, desperate effort to try and catch the stairwell railing, but with his perception distorted and the shadows impenetrable, his reaching fingers found nothing but emptiness. 

_This is..._

The thought didn't get any further. A second, suffocating blanket of numbness overtook him, rendering him thankfully unconscious before he had to feel the brutal impact of the fall.

* * *

At some point, Gin had lost all sense of orientation. He couldn't figure out which direction gravity was trying to pull him, couldn't tell up from down or sideways and he thought not knowing should really worry him a whole lot more than it did, but he was finding it pretty difficult to feel anything at all. Not even his own body, which was something of a relief, because he had the vague impression he should have been bracing for some sort of awful pain.

The most he could discern was that there was something solid under his back, hard and cold like stone. There was pressure under his legs too, so he thought he might be sitting up, and as he stared hard in front of him (once he figured out his eyes were open) the murky shadows began to lighten to more decipherable shades of grey, and then white. White folds of cloth across broad shoulders, the elegant sweep of a coat, the gentle drape of hakama. Flecks of gold in brown, warm eyes. A sensual, familiar smile.

“S'been a while,” he croaked. His lungs, like his eyes, were still remembering how to work. “Aizen-taichou.”

“Gin,” Aizen greeted, sounding as serene as always, and any uncertainty Gin might have been feeling melted away uselessly. _This_ , he knew as well as his own skin; the benevolent cruelty in Aizen's expression. “You seem well.”

Gin didn't think he did, but Aizen had always seemed to enjoy the frivolous exchange of pleasantries, more so when they were absurd. Gin managed to incline his head stiltedly, half his muscles still locked in paralysis. “You too.”

_Aizen Sousuke was dead._ The thought surfaced in a hazy fashion, and Gin managed a smile for the man. He did look pretty good, for a corpse, but then he couldn't imagine Aizen accepting anything less than perfection from himself.

“I wonder,” Aizen mused, reaching out idly, his fingers brushing against Gin's shoulder as if to dust away a fleck of dirt. “Did I ever thank you, Gin?”

Bright crimson bloomed under Aizen's fingers...or maybe Gin just hadn't noticed it before. It felt awkward, trying to angle his head to look at what Aizen was doing, but after a moment he realised the growing bloodstain was because Aizen's fingers were digging _into his flesh_. They were scouring a long, diagonal line from his left shoulder across his chest, slicing through his skin as if they were sharp as knives. Bizarre as it was, he supposed Aizen might very well be capable of something like that. More strange was that it didn't seem to hurt at all. He just felt a vague sense of discomfort at the sensation of muscle and sinew being pushed aside, the scrape of Aizen's hands against his bones.

It was distracting too. He almost forgot he'd been asked a question. “For what?”

He didn't panic. He'd learned to hide his fear, again and again, each time making it more difficult to uncover, forcing Aizen to push him farther than should have been reasonable, possible, forgiveable. The man might have lost interest otherwise, and then Gin would have been nothing but dead. Besides, this didn't hurt...yet.

“For the years of invaluable service, of course,” Aizen said, sounding wholly sincere and attentive even though his gaze was focused on his work. He'd reached the final arch of Gin's ribs, and without bone to shield his organs, Aizen's fingers delved a little deeper as they descended. Blood smeared up to his wrist as he idly reached into the cavity of Gin's abdomen, caressing the slippery coils of his intestines. Gin's breath hitched, but he managed to keep his voice even.

“Don't think so,” he said, teeth bared in a smirking grimace. “Do I get some sort of reward?”

“Perhaps,” Aizen conceded, finally pulling his hand away now that he'd drawn a gruesome line all the way down to Gin's hip. “Though there's still one last thing I need from you.”

He leaned over Gin, still smiling placidly, the heat of his body warm where Gin's was cool. His motions were almost tender as his bloody hand touched lightly to the centre of Gin's chest, before brutally pushing in. Gin's sternum broke with a gory crack that made him gasp, and though it still didn't hurt, the way his lungs seized did. He could feel Aizen's knuckles brushing against his heart, pushing it out of place, disrupting its anxious rhythm, and only _now_ was he afraid after Aizen had pushed one step too far to be reversed. He squeezed his eyes shut, tasted blood-

And woke up in darkness, still unable to move, but only because his body knew better than his brain did that agony was the only thing that would follow. Gin spent a painful minute gasping, trying to slow his breathing, trying to figure out where he was.

Still in the cellar, he realised once he'd managed to calm down a little. The pressure under his back was the floor, and he thought his leg might still have been propped up on the last step because it felt like it was elevated. He must have been in the darkness long enough for his eyes to start adjusting, because he could make out a few vague shapes in his surroundings. He supposed that would help as he cleared his mind and tried to take stock of the shape his body was in.

He shifted his head carefully. Neck wasn't broken. That was a good sign, he supposed, but as he turned cautiously to one side he caught sight of his out-flung arm and tried not to wince. It was bending in at least two places it shouldn't have been. His other arm seemed alright, though, curled close to his body. He flexed each of his fingers before stretching out the elbow, hissing lowly in discomfort. It might not be broken, but it certainly wasn't happy either. He felt carefully across his face, finding blooming spots of heat that signified bruises, and very tentatively he tracked down the origin of the throbbing ache in his skull to a gash on the side of his head. The blood had coagulated already. He must have been out for a while.

Not long enough for anyone to come looking for him, though. Gin almost felt annoyed about that. Also concerned, because he didn't think he'd be able to pry the door or pick the lock, considering the shape he was in. He was a little afraid to try moving anything below the collarbones because he had the vague impression there was something seriously wrong. He couldn't quite tell how much pain he was in, which meant he was probably concussed and couldn't afford to just lay here until Byakuya started wondering where he was. He needed to move.

His first attempt ended poorly. Lifting his shoulders jostled his broken arm, and he cried out sharply at the unnatural grind of shattered bone. The sound of his own voice echoed mournfully as he tried to figure out how to proceed. _Very carefully._ He rolled this time so his arm wasn't dragged along by the movement of his torso, managing to curl mostly onto his side, where he very nearly passed out.

_The seals._

He didn't think his spine was broken, but it seemed very paltry consolation when his back was _blazing_ with pain. Rolling on it badly had been terrible enough. Falling down a flight of stairs made it feel like someone had ripped all the skin off his back, leaving nothing but raw, brutalised nerves.

For a long minute he did nothing but wheeze pitifully against the floor, courting the temptation of continued unconsciousness. He couldn't see straight. He couldn't think straight. It might be better to just not move, ever again, but the thought of Byakuya finding him like this, curled up pathetically at the bottom of the staircase, helpless, defenceless, gave him the courage to move. It took several long and painful minutes to sit up, groaning and cursing for every unbearable moment of it, but he finally managed to get himself dizzily upright, broken arm braced across his lap.

_Now what?_

Gin glanced around him, but from what little he could see, there was nothing useful at the bottom of the staircase that might help him. Nothing he could use to splint his arm or bind his gashes with. Nothing he could have used to get the door open either. The cellar was depressingly spartan. 

He could see a deeper shadow that might have been a corridor; leading to the cell he'd stayed in not so long ago, perhaps, and maybe if he wandered that way he might find something...or he might find nothing, and he was going to have to be careful with what little strength he had. With reiatsu, he'd have trusted his own resilience, but powerless souls were much more fragile. At full strength, he could fall fifty feet without suffering so much as a bruise. Right now he felt positively frail, and terrifyingly helpless.

He had to get back up the stairs. Dignity be damned, he'd call for help and hope like hell someone would hear him. Maybe he'd be lucky enough to find the door unlocked, if the cousin had lost interest in his entertainment, although that might be a little optimistic. Still, he wouldn't know unless he made it up there. 

He considered trying to stand, and thought better of it. His back was raw agony and his sense of balance was non-existent. One of his knees felt wrenched, and if he looked carefully in the darkness he could see the dark discolouration of the skin that suggested he'd definitely landed on it at some point in his fall. He didn't want to test his weight on it, and that more or less quelled any ideas of trying to explore the basement for some other way out. His only choice was to climb – or more accurately, crawl – up one painful stair at a time.

Gin managed only two before he had to stop for a rest, head spinning. His arm was screaming with every jolt of motion, and his back...he could feel something wet and sticky dripping down his spine and he wasn't sure if it was sweat or blood. Maybe both. He tried not to give it any thought, focusing instead on the sneering bastard of a noble who'd sent him down here in the first place. Gin was going to have to come up with something suitably creative in revenge. Something that couldn't be traced back to him. Preferably something fatal. He gave it over to his imagination to mull over whilst the rest of his concentration focused on the climb.

There were perhaps only thirty steps, but for the time it was taking him, it might as well have been three hundred. When his brain ran out of exotic tactics for getting his hands on tripwires or explosives, he turned his mind towards what Byakuya would do when he found out about this. Probably scold Gin for making a mess of himself and wasting everyone's time. Maybe he'd make Gin suffer the rest of the week with his arm still broken, until the bones started to heal wrong. It might serve him right for being so pathetic.

He had to forcibly shake himself out of that morbid thought, blinking rapidly and wavering, his weight slipping precariously on the stair. It would be extremely unpleasant if he fell again, and the spike of adrenaline gave him strength to climb another few painful feet. How many had he gone up now? Fifteen? Nearly twenty?

Even with his (admittedly cynical) imagination offering him all sorts of dire consequences for what Byakuya would do to him after this, Gin would have given almost anything to see him right about now. The cold, dark confines of the cellar were oppressive, like a tomb. It occurred to him that he could just as easily have dashed his brains out on the edge of a stair or broken his neck in the fall. He might have died, and no one would know.

He really was horribly alone here. Was there really a point in trying so hard to reach the top? No one was waiting for him there.

Except Byakuya, perhaps, wondering why he wasn't around to sneer at or to run another bath. Not exactly a welcoming reception, perhaps, but the thought still make Gin smirk twistedly in spite of his exhaustion. Better than nothing, he supposed.

One more step, and he could finally see the the tall shadow of the door. Panting heavily, he reached out, and the tips of his nails just barely managed to scrape against the grain of the wood. He allowed himself a fierce grimace of a grin in self-congratulation before his head started swimming again. The gash on the side of his skull was really throbbing, making his senses feel unbalanced. He hastily hooked his good arm through the slatted gap between the stairs, hoping that would be enough to stop him from slipping all the way back down again if he happened to pass out. He tried to hold it off, setting his forehead down on the nearest step, taking deep, slow breaths, trying to focus on what he should be doing next.

Or on what he'd just been doing. He couldn't quite remember.

It was cold.

Cold enough for his breath to mist the air in front of him. He blinked snowflakes from his lashes, glancing around in bewilderment. A moment ago it had felt like he'd been lost in the dark, a shadow passing over him, but now it was blindingly white, with jagged teeth of ice dangling ominously from every tree branch like hungry fangs, and snow piled thickly on the ground, bleaching it of colour.

Everything was white...except for the corpse on the ground, which was splashed over with a furious cross-hatching of crimson. Gin glanced down at his arm (now whole, unbroken) and in his hand was a sword, wet to the hilt with blood.

_Ahhh_. This scene was a familiar one. With careless, ungentle force he rolled the body over and looked down on the face of the dead shinigami; the first man he had ever killed. He tried to call up a hint of the dark, furious hatred that had compelled him to attack the man so viciously, but it was gone now. Spent. 

(In future, he wouldn't make the same mistake. He wouldn't lose control of himself like that. He kept it all locked down inside, under a smiling mask, and his killing was cleaner, more efficient, but no less cruel.

Exactly what the man in the glasses would want to see.)

Right now, all he felt was a vague annoyance about how on earth he was going to dispose of the body. The ground was too frozen to dig into. The river was iced over as well. Maybe he could just bury it in the snow and no one would find it until Spring?

“Gin?”

He started muzzily, but that voice didn't belong to Rangiku, it belonged to-

Byakuya. He was back in the cellar, precariously balanced on the narrow span of the staircase. Byakuya's fingers were prodding carefully at his hairline, sweeping Gin's bangs away from his eyes. The noble seemed to take Gin's dazed blinking as enough of a sign of comprehension, because his lips thinned with ominous displeasure. “What are you doing here?”

Gin's head was still swimming, making it difficult to focus on the words, but he knew he had to answer Byakua's question. Punishment would follow, otherwise. He blinked again, and found himself looking down at a steaming corpse, blood all over his hands announcing his guilt.

“I knew he'd come back,” Gin slurred, trying and failing to locate Byakuya again, but all he could see was the empty forest. “Knew he'd be looking for...tried to do the same to me as he did to Rangiku. Pervert probably got off on hurting kids...”

He remembered that one brief instant when the man had put his hands on Gin's shoulders, his mouth twisted in an ugly leer. No wonder Rangiku still woke up crying. Gin hadn't been quite so helpless, however, and before the shinigami's slimy grasp could taint anything further he'd been much more concerned with the blade Gin had stabbed in his belly than whatever filthy act he'd had in mind.

“So I killed him,” Gin whispered, and he couldn't even pretend to feel sorry for it. “Cut him to pieces so he couldn't do it again.”

He shook his head slightly to try and dislodge the fog, and found he could see Byakuya's face again. His fine, aquiline features were utterly impassive at Gin's rambling. The guard behind him seemed more unnerved. “Uh, Kuchiki-sama...”

“He's delusional,” Byakuya said curtly, not even deigning to look up. “The head wound is severe. Have my sister summon Yamada-san from the Fourth to meet me in the slave's quarters.”

“Yes sir!” The man seemed all too eager to be gone, which Gin thought he would be hazily amused by if he didn't feel so dizzy. His only consolation was that the pain seemed to have receded to a more comfortable numbness. Maybe that was because of the cold.

His shoulder was roughly shaken as his head began to list back down against the stair. Byakuya was scowling at him. “Focus, Gin. Stand up.”

Gin groaned heavily. “Can't. Hurts. Gonna fall.”

“I won't permit it,” Byakuya informed him, and with a tone that severe Gin imagined that even gravity would think twice before trying to prove him wrong. He hissed painfully as Byakuya took a firm grip beneath his arms and began levering him upwards, but reluctantly did his best to find his feet and not overbalance them both in the process.

He needn't have worried, though. Byakuya's strength was more than up to the task, and his balance was preternaturally perfect. Gin might have been jealous, but the effort of standing had left him wheezing for breath and shuddering with clammy chills. He'd meant to steal the kosode off that corpse to cover his own thin yukata for warmth (a pragmatic decision as much as a desire for a memento to remind him of what he needed to do next) but he'd lost sight of the forest now. All he had was the heat of Byakuya's body, which wasn't necessarily a bad substitute for blood-sticky cloth.

“Hold on.”

Byakuya's words were hardly any sort of warning for the sickening lurch of shunpo. Gin's vision flickered warningly. He might even have lost consciousness for a moment, because the next thing he was aware of was the pressure of Byakuya's grip tilting his jaw, angling it for a better look at the gash. Blinking owlishly, he found himself propped up against the wall beside his futon, broken arm draped awkwardly across his lap. He admired it with a sickening sort of fascination, but interesting as it was, he couldn't dismiss the uncertain itch that he'd forgotten something fairly important.

Oh, right. He still needed to take care of that body. 

“Mph...don't.” He tried to swat Byakuya's hands away, but his depth perception seemed heinously distorted. He didn't think his aim was anything close to accurate. “M'fine. Need to go.”

“Don't move.”

Gin's attempt to rise was sternly aborted by Byakuya's hands pushing him back down firmly, but more gently than Gin might have expected. Then again, it probably didn't take much strength to keep Gin in place. His hands hadn't left Gin's shoulders, although their grip seemed less like a restriction and more like...concern, maybe, except that nothing on Byakuya's features suggested as much. His face was entirely opaque. Gin didn't think he'd have been able to read it even if his head weren't pounding.

“And stay awake,” Byakuya snapped when Gin's lashes started to list closed again. Gin nodded groggily, less out of compliance and more because he thought it might convince Byakuya to leave him alone long enough to either pass out or crawl off; whichever he could manage.

Byakuya seemed to realise it, though. He gripped Gin's shoulders more forcefully, trying to make Gin meet his eye. “Tell me about him.”

“Who?” Gin slurred.

“The man you killed. The one who hurt Matsumoto-san.”

Gin's heart lurched. He should have been able to hide it better, but at the time point his fractured mind was half-immersed in – the memory of himself more than a century younger – he hadn't learned yet how to mask himself properly. His distress was raw on his face, and his good hand tugged desperately on Byakuya's collar.

“You won't tell her, will you?” His voice was a hoarse whisper, as if she might overhear them. She was meant to be close-by, after all. Gin didn't like to let her go off on her own, even if he sometimes pretended to leave. “She doesn't know I saw them. What they did to her.”

No one was ever meant to know. Shared secrets were dangerous. The man with the glasses might hear about it, and that would ruin everything. Byakuya gave him a long and measured look, but whatever he saw in Gin's expression seemed to soften his sharp exterior by the smallest of degrees. “I won't tell.”

Gin's relief was palatable; mortifyingly so. When coherence returned, he was going to be cursing himself for this lapse, but for the moment, everything was fine. Confused as he was, he didn't quite remember what Byakuya was to him. Only that he was familiar, that he was someone that Gin needed to listen to, and that his word could (mostly) be trusted. It was enough to satisfy the less overbearing caution he'd possessed as a child, as opposed to the unstable paranoia he'd developed as Aizen's right hand man.

Of course, if his mind hadn't been such a broken place, he might have recalled that there was no one he could have confided in at that time besides Rangiku who he understandably didn't want to broach it with. He'd had no other friends, nor even sympathetic acquaintances. He'd never stopped to wonder if that might have made a difference.

“There were three of them,” he began, but was distracted by a flicker of movement at the door. Rukia's name didn't quite form itself in his mind, but even though he knew she was familiar too, she didn't elicit the same tenuous trust Byakuya had. Gin resolutely shut his mouth, cutting off whatever else he might have said.

“What happened?” Rukia asked, giving Gin a startled look. He probably looked a mess, he conceded. Better clean the blood off before Rangiku saw him. 

“I'm not certain,” Byakuya said, and had he the capacity to realise it, Gin would have been amused to note how around his sister Byakuya's guard dropped enough for a note of frustration to break through. “I need to make some inquiries. Can you watch him until Yamada-san arrives?”

“Of course.” Rukia's bow was respectful, but the moment Byakuya left she turned a conflicted expression on Gin, like she had no idea at all what to do with him. His own face mirrored the sentiment with equal wariness. Finally she scoffed – at herself, it seemed – and came to crouch down beside him as Byakuya had. “Let me see your arm.”

She didn't sound very enthused about the request. Gin couldn't say he was either, although he had the vague impression he wasn't allowed to directly refuse her. He drew his arm closer to himself, bracing it with his uninjured hand. “I'm good, thanks.”

“I wasn't asking,” she growled through gritted teeth, and reached for it anyway. For a moment he considered fighting back, but doing so would probably hurt him more than anything she likely intended to do. He turned his head away as she began probing at the very prominent bend in his forearm where the bone was obviously out of place. He could feel something else, too; her reiatsu seeping beneath his skin, assessing the damage beneath.

“This isn't going to be easy to heal,” she murmured, eyes closed. “Your body can't regenerate reishi well with your power sealed. No wonder Hanatarou is always so tired after working on you.”

Gin made a non-committal sound. He didn't really care about the particulars, only about how agonised tremors were shooting up towards his shoulder. Thankfully, she decided to move on, her hands moving with practised methodology, checking each bump and bruise for severity before finally, tentatively, reaching up towards the head-wound. It must have bleed quite profusely at first, because he could feel the itchy crust of blood dried on his nape and in his hair. His breath hissed when she brushed some of the clotted strands aside, but if anything, she was more careful than Byakuya had been. The hazy touch of her reiatsu eased the intensity of the ache.

“Not too deep,” she surmised curtly. “I can start here.”

It almost sounded like a question rather than a statement, and when he glanced at her she seemed to realise it, because with a sour twist to her lips she unceremoniously pressed her palm over the wound and the delving prickle of her power became a more effusive warmth of healing. 

“Mmmph.” The sigh escaped him unbidden. He even let his eyes drift closed, posture slackening as the throbbing started to recede. She wasn't so bad after all. Though she might not have the trust of his mindless instincts, Gin felt a small swell of something he might not ever admit to in a lucid frame of mind. He couldn't exactly say he respected her, but even though their relationship was more antagonistic than ever, he was starting to regard her with something like endearment. Funny that, but Gin was always much more fond of his enemies than his friends, it seemed. Not that he really had any of the former.

He must have drifted again, because suddenly there were two voices murmuring in close proximity. He blearily cracked an eye, watching as a dark haired young man moved his broken arm (thankfully, painlessly) into a more accessible position.

“You can use the acupuncture point at the elbow to anaesthetise the nerves. It'll make setting the bone easier,” he explained calmly, and though his coherence was still fragmented, Gin was piqued to note that the frenetically anxious energy Hanatarou usually projected was entirely absent when he was healing. His grip was light and sure on Gin's arm as he demonstrated the technique for Rukia.

“I see.” Her interest was sober and entirely sincere, and the small smile she directed at her fiance was shaded with admiration. Gin was torn between rolling his eyes and finding it vaguely touching, in an exasperatingly sentimental way.

“It's a clean fracture, at least,” he murmured, his hands tracing blessedly numbing lines up to Gin's wrist where he suddenly frowned. “But here...I wonder how-?”

“I fell,” Gin injected promptly, making Hanatarou flinch, but thankfully he was too well-trained to yank on Gin's arm.

Rukia stared at him dubiously. “You fell?”

“Down the stairs,” Gin clarified, wondering if it was worth trying to shift his position to ease the scalding ache where his back pressed the wall, or if moving would just jostle the tender tattoo more. “In the basement.”

“Poor you,” Rukia said, and he thought perhaps she was aiming to sound sarcastic and somehow accidentally fell short. She made up for it by scowling ferociously, all traces of tenderness chased away.

“But, ah...” Hanatarou faltered. “This isn't...I mean...”

“What?” Rukia asked, nudging Hanatarou firmly with her elbow. Apparently even he was not spared the brutality of that fearsome appendage.

“This...this injury isn't characteristic of a fall,” he said, shoulders hunching uncertainly. “In falls, the force normally causes a break in this direction.” He gestured from the the outside of Gin's forearm, and Gin supposed that would make sense. It seemed the more natural direction to expect an impact from if one were suddenly sent sprawling towards the ground. “But here...”

Gin's arm was undoubtably fractured in the opposite directed, from the inside of the forearm. He'd had to have twisted his arm to a fairly extreme contortion to have cracked it against the stairs when he fell.

“And this bruise,” Hanatarou continued, frowning. “It looks like it's...”

Approximately the width of someone's foot if applied with significant pressure, Gin noted, catching on slightly quicker than Rukia did. It might not have been the only explanation, but given the circumstances surrounding his fall, he couldn't say he was entirely surprised.

“I must have fallen on it very creatively, then,” Gin said, doing his best to sound firm and authoritative even though his head was pounding with the effort. As Rukia leaned over to try and see what Hanatarou was suggesting, Gin gave the medic a hard stare he had spent plenty of time honing on his subordinates which essentially said, _you're just a grunt, stop acting like you have permission to think._

It earned him a gratifyingly strangled gulp, and Hanatarou's shoulders hunched further. “M-maybe.”

By the time Rukia looked up, Gin had smoothed his expression again, and Hanatarou's was hidden behind the dark curtain of his hair. She wasn't entirely convinced, but then again she'd already been caught out twice expending more care and concern on Gin than she really had any need to. Thankfully, it seemed she decided to let it drop.

Good. Gin was too tired to summon any convincing lies, to try and follow her conversation, to keep himself anchored to this present when the memory of snow and blood was swimming just below his eyelids. He didn't want to think about kidou spells or bones breaking under heel when he could just surrender himself to the crisp satisfaction of his first kill and the freedom he'd now lost to slaughter those who well and truly deserved it.


End file.
